First of all: Don't panic. People live every day on heavily restricted diets. You (or your child) can too.
Finding out that you're allergic to even one staple food is tough -- you have to clean out your pantry, find substitutes for foods you've always enjoyed, learn to navigate eating out at restaurants (or forgo it altogether for a time), and potentially learn to cook, if it's not a skill you'd cultivated before. Being allergic to multiple foods can more than double the complexity of eating -- even if you do find packaged foods that are free from one allergen, they're likely to include another allergen as a replacement.
Allergies to any two or more of soy, corn, and wheat are especially tough because few packaged foods are free from all three. Being allergic to both milk and soy makes baking especially difficult, even more so with an egg allergy in the mix. And milk, eggs, nuts, and some meats are high-protein foods and common allergens that often go together. Many other combinations make cooking and grocery shopping difficult, but these are some of the most common and more frustrating.
To manage multiple allergies, it's ideal to set up a team. First, you'll want to work with your allergist to confirm your allergies. Retesting -- either using a different testing method or at regular intervals to determine whether allergies have been outgrown (in the case of a child) -- may help eliminate some allergens from the list of foods you need to avoid, giving you more options. Some tests have a fairly high rate of false positives, while other tests sometimes given for food allergies are considered unreliable at best.
A dietitian or nutritionist with expertise in restricted diets can be invaluable in helping ensure that you're eating a balanced diet, even without recourse to common foods. She can also help you create meal plans and come up with possible alternatives to the foods you need to remove from your diet.
Finally, it helps to have some support, especially during the early stages while you're getting used to your new diet. This support could take the form of a few good friends who are willing to lend an ear, a support group (or an online food allergy forum), or a therapist who specializes in patients with chronic illness. Support -- especially from someone in a similar situation -- can help you cope with the inevitable ups and downs of life with a chronic condition and give you tips and strategies for all aspects of managing your food allergies.
