Yeah, I thought about that early on, but I wanted to avoid using
another area.

My simplest solution so far is to abandon commas alltogether and us "/"
instead. So and item would look like this...

Apple / Orange / Pear

Luckily none of my items include that delimiter. I can then use that
character easily in search and count routines and the user can easily
edit the DV list directly in the dialog box.