Our story

Damin’s story

Someone reading this fell asleep last night scratching a child’s back. So did I.

My son was born in July 2014. His father is Italian and I am Korean, but we gave him a Korean name — Damin. At 60 days old, what we thought was newborn heat rash turned out to be severe atopic dermatitis.

Until he was one year old and on solid food, there were only five ingredients he could eat. He reacted to everything else.

At night he woke every two hours, crying to be scratched. I would hold his hands and scratch his back and legs half-asleep. Some nights it went on for an hour or two.

I bought thousands of dollars’ worth of creams. I tried every natural remedy people recommended. We went to hospital after hospital. And back then it all felt like my fault, and every day was hard.

Every mother of a child with eczema asks herself at least once why this happened to her baby. At least if he were simply ill, she thinks, it could be fixed.

She spends whole nights moving from blog to blog, looking for reviews, looking for treatments, joining forums and leaving questions. She lies awake worrying that her own choice is making her child worse.

She looks at other babies’ skin wherever she goes. She touches the soft skin of her sleeping child and imagines the sore places becoming soft too, and sometimes she cries.

Mothers of children with eczema need someone in their corner.

From the blog, April 2018

This is written for whoever is standing there now.

The first time someone said “look for the cause”

Everything we had done until then was putting something on the skin, or taking something away. Looking at what was happening inside the body was a new idea to us.

It was a blood and urine test that reads the state of the metabolism. We adjusted food and nutrition according to the results. Nothing changed overnight.

About six months after the second test, the symptoms across his body were gone, and stayed gone. It was the first time in years.

And then it came back

About two months after he started nursery, symptoms appeared all over his body again — different from before. I had thought it was over, and I was frightened.

The hospital said it did not look like eczema. No one could say what it was, and he was in pain. A fever and diarrhoea went on for more than ten days and he lost 2kg. The hospital gave him nothing in particular.

With no clear answer, we contacted the clinic and, based on the second test, received a new regimen matched to what he had then. After about two weeks it settled. I was beside him around the clock for those two weeks.

To this day I do not know whether it was an infection or a virus. I write this down because I do not want to tell you that one test makes everything finished.

January 2021 · age 6

A day, four years later

The question we are asked most often is “how is he now?” This is the record as it stood four years after treatment ended.

Diet

No restrictions outside

His diet is free. He eats foods he was once allergic to, with no special care. At home I cook with good ingredients, and there is still no sugar and no potato in the house. Outside, he eats pizza and ice cream like any other child.

Environment

Weather no longer matters

Climate and season have no effect. We travel abroad, and he can visit Korea at any time of year.

Supplements

What he still takes

One multivitamin and vitamins C and D, consistently. When a cold seems to be coming, or he looks tired, I add a probiotic.

Care

A small nightly ritual

A saline mist for his nose and a natural spray for his throat, every night, whatever the season.

The above reflects January 2021. Every person’s condition and course is different. This is one child’s experience and does not promise the same outcome. Nothing here is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Why this work exists

In May 2016, two months before Damin turned two, I wrote my first blog post. It started with something my husband said: “Write down what you love and what you are good at, and imagine what you could make by connecting the two.”

A mother read that record and got in touch. She was our first patient. Many stories have followed since.

What I needed most back then was not information. It was someone who had already walked this road — someone to ask how to fill in the English forms, how to ship the sample, what the words on the report actually meant.

So I decided to be that person. Not to take your application and disappear, but to stay — after the results arrive, through a repeat test, and through whatever goes wrong along the way.

Here is what you can do next.

You do not have to decide on testing today. We talk first, and work out together whether the test makes sense for you now. The first consultation is free.

Let’s talk first.

Send us a message and we will arrange a call. We listen to your situation first, and decide together whether testing makes sense for you now. The first consultation is free.