When Cole Rickett came home from work one day, his partner greeted him at the door, shaking and crying.

“He looked at me and I just blurted out, ‘I can have a baby’,” said Amanda Cosburn.

Her emotional state was the result of finally hearing something she had hoped for, but hadn’t counted on happening — the B.C. government will introduce a monthly food subsidy for people like Cosburn, people whose bodies cannot handle protein.

The technical name is phenylketonuria, a disease parents know as PKU, and one that has meant Cosburn and 170 other PKU patients in the province have had to live on a restricted diet.

KTW ran a feature on Cosburn in October that described how she would have to pay $19 for nine tiny specially made bagels or a basic baking mix that would cost her $55 a week.

A pregnancy would have been difficult for her, Cosburn said at the time, because she would have to keep her level of phenylalaline, an amino acid found in foods that can be toxic to the brain and lead to a variety of conditions, at a low level for six months before conception, during the pregnancy and during nursing.

That wouldn’t have been easy given the unpredictability of conception and the simple reality that, sometimes, the simple costs of the PKU diet could be extraordinarily high.

In fact, Cosburn said, since the announcement of the subsidy was made by Health Minister Terry Lake on Nov. 28, she has had women calling her who have not been able to afford the diet.

“And now they are saying they can go back on it and one of them said that now she can have a baby,” she said.

“It’s been an emotional whirlwind since it was announced.

“This is going to change a lot of lives.

The subsidy will benefit 209 people now, the others having various metabolic conditions, such as maple syrup urine disease, which stops the body from processing some proteins and which can lead to developmental issues and death.

Cosburn is still hoping the government will approve Kuvan, a drug available in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Quebec that would also help her control the PKU.

“We have a long way to go but this is a big step,” she said.

In making the announcement, Lake said the monthly $250 subsidy will cost the government $700,000 a year to provide.

It comes into effect on Jan. 1.