School trip to Northern France & Belgium

This piece was something which I was really excited to write and share with you all. Now that my dissertation is FINALLY out of the way, I am so happy that I can.

I’ve not done a great deal of travelling, but so far I’ve been lucky enough to visit America, Amsterdam and a few other European countries (I’m really hoping to do more in the future). But for now, I would specifically like to focus on when I went to Northern France and Belgium with my History class when I was fourteen. I feel like this trip was essential for me, not just because it was my first time outside of the country without my family, but it was also the first time that I dealt with my diet completely independently. I feel like this was a massive step for me in terms of developing confidence.

At this point in my life I still felt very self- conscious and awkward about my diet, so to make things a little less stressful for me and to give me a sense of ‘normality’, I made the bold decision to not take my weighing scales with me and instead make rough estimates as to how much protein I would be eating. As I had always weighed my food portions up until this point, the idea of suddenly not doing so anymore was a little nerve-wracking. But prior to the trip, I spoke to my doctor and dietician about this to get their advice and they were happy enough for me to go ahead with it. (If you are thinking of doing a similar thing, then I would recommend speaking your doctor/ dietician first). As the trip was only to last five days and they understood me to be someone who had always lived strictly on diet, with consistently good blood results, they were confident that I would return healthy enough. They actually reassured me by telling me that I would not be randomly guessing amounts of protein, but instead making ‘educated calculations’ as it was something which I was so familiar with. After the trip they also wanted me to test my bloods so that we could see if this mini ‘off diet’ experience had affected me at all.

I also spoke to one of my teachers about my PKU so that she was at least aware of it, but essentially all was going to be left down to me. In terms of what food I took with me, my memory is a little hazy, but I definitely remember taking my supplement, milk and some of my bread. I may also have taken a box of pasta. But for the majority of the time, when it came to meals I was eating similar food to everybody else. Although I was not weighing my food, I was still very cautious. I only stuck to foods which I knew were relatively low in protein, so for most of time I ate either vegetables or at least a vegetarian alternative. I think I also was lucky because the place where we ate at most evenings was set up in a buffet style, where I could take a plate and serve my own portions of food, which was extremely convenient for me to estimate how much protein I was having. Overall meal times went quite smoothly, apart from one particular evening when I remember trying to attempt at expressing the fact that I didn’t want any meat with my meal at all (when I knew very little French). It was stressful to say the least.

An additional worry of mine though was that I would still have exchanges left at the end of a day, and as I could do at home, I would not be able to just wander to the kitchen to get a snack. For anyone who doesn’t have PKU, it’s worth mentioning here that my entire protein allowance must be consumed every day. (If your protein allowance is 10 grams, for example, then all 10 must be eaten, no more and no less). So I settled this worry just by taking some extra food with me which stored in my room. I took things like biscuits, yoghurts and crisps so that if I thought I hadn’t quite eaten my protein allowance at the end of a day then I would have these as a sort of back up source.

On returning from France, I did my bloods and was surprised to see that, although there was some change to my usual level, it was not drastically different.

I’ll be honest, dealing with my diet alone for the first time in these circumstances was a very daunting experience. But I am so glad that I did it because it filled me with a little more confidence and proved to me that actually I don’t have to miss out on these experiences just because of my PKU. If you like me, live with PKU and have a love for travel, then I hope that what I have shared here makes you realise that your PKU shouldn’t hold you back.