Phenylketonuria

As a baby I was diagnosed with Phenylketonuria or PKU, which restricts how much protein my body can process. Growing up with PKU was a difficult thing, I couldn't eat many of the foods my peers would enjoy like ice cream, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or any type of meat.  Whenever my friends had birthday parties I would have to eat at home before hand.  I was never able to have the pizza and cake that they seemed to enjoy so much.  In school I had to eat lunches that were measured and counted before hand, and if I didn't eat all of it I had to bring it home to recount it.

In high school things were better; my diet was more relaxed and being vegetarian wasn't looked down on.  In fact my school offered vegetarian and vegan lunches.  I graduated high school and began college, while that doesn't seem like much, it was a pretty big moment for me.  All my life I knew that if I had been born not even ten years before I wouldn't have made it to that point.

The technologies that were developed in those ten years before I was born allowed me to be a fully functioning, normal person.  The testings at birth to the medications that I have had to take all allow me to live my life, and will, in the future allow me to have normal healthy children.  I am also excited to see that in the last five years they have come closer and closer to developing enzyme therapy that could one day make the restricted diet a thing of the past.