I Have Allergies
"I Have Allergies" is the slogan my son's allergist said Johnny should wear on his shirt anytime he is involved in group activities. Yes, we got the blood test back. The blood test that required A LOT of blood. NINE vials. I thought I was going to be sick myself. Anyway, the results were really good and really bad - hence the need for the shirt.
It seems my son has double and quadruple the allergy cell counts (depending on which kind) of a normal child. It may have been even worse than that if I could've heard the phone call from the doc better despite my best efforts to barricade myself in my bathroom away from the noisy kids. -Quick aside - I had locked my bedroom door and my bathroom door. The bedroom was an airlock between me and the kids and still the kids yelled and pounded and howled and frazzled my nerves as I tried my best to hear and understand the allergist on the phone. And people wonder why I am not a phone talker.- I will need to obtain a hard copy of the blood test results to go through while the children sleep.
What I do know from the phone call is that milk and peanut are still absolute no-nos. Too dangerous to try kind of results, but we are going to try some more of the tree nuts with some food challenges. A food challenge is when you try a food alone and wait and see if there are any reactions in a doctor's office. We need to food challenge hazel nuts, brazil nuts, and walnuts. We will also food challenge more fish perhaps at home as we have been successful with tuna and salmon. As for the shellfish, we may try to food challenge those at home, but I am a little nervous about it. Shellfish are related to dust mites (gross) and Johnny is horribly allergic to dust mites. His bed is covered in top of the line $$$ dust mite encasings, because the nightly hack-hack-hack-vomit had to stop. Anyway, his eating something similar to a giant dust mite tends to make me a little nervous.
The good news is that at 6 years old now, Johnny is growing out of some of these allergies. He is less allergic to a lot of foods other than the scary the milk and peanut allergies. Yet on the bright side, a peanut vaccine in the works is about 5 years out. The trials have been successful in even the most severely peanut allergic persons. As for the milk, we wait a little longer. 99% of children grow out their milk allergy by age ten. It has been noted that kids are holding on to their food allergies longer, so may it will be longer than age ten for Johnny especially since his milk allergy is so severe.
It seems my son has double and quadruple the allergy cell counts (depending on which kind) of a normal child. It may have been even worse than that if I could've heard the phone call from the doc better despite my best efforts to barricade myself in my bathroom away from the noisy kids. -Quick aside - I had locked my bedroom door and my bathroom door. The bedroom was an airlock between me and the kids and still the kids yelled and pounded and howled and frazzled my nerves as I tried my best to hear and understand the allergist on the phone. And people wonder why I am not a phone talker.- I will need to obtain a hard copy of the blood test results to go through while the children sleep.
What I do know from the phone call is that milk and peanut are still absolute no-nos. Too dangerous to try kind of results, but we are going to try some more of the tree nuts with some food challenges. A food challenge is when you try a food alone and wait and see if there are any reactions in a doctor's office. We need to food challenge hazel nuts, brazil nuts, and walnuts. We will also food challenge more fish perhaps at home as we have been successful with tuna and salmon. As for the shellfish, we may try to food challenge those at home, but I am a little nervous about it. Shellfish are related to dust mites (gross) and Johnny is horribly allergic to dust mites. His bed is covered in top of the line $$$ dust mite encasings, because the nightly hack-hack-hack-vomit had to stop. Anyway, his eating something similar to a giant dust mite tends to make me a little nervous.
The good news is that at 6 years old now, Johnny is growing out of some of these allergies. He is less allergic to a lot of foods other than the scary the milk and peanut allergies. Yet on the bright side, a peanut vaccine in the works is about 5 years out. The trials have been successful in even the most severely peanut allergic persons. As for the milk, we wait a little longer. 99% of children grow out their milk allergy by age ten. It has been noted that kids are holding on to their food allergies longer, so may it will be longer than age ten for Johnny especially since his milk allergy is so severe.
posted by Tiffane | 6:25 PM
2 Comments:
The bad news is, those estimates of outgrowing milk allergies are a bit overstated - http://www.godairyfree.org/200711152111/News/Nutrition-Headlines/Milk-Allergies-Persist-Much-Longer-Than-Prior-Estimates.html. But the good news is, milk allergies do typically lessen in severity. Mine has become less severe, but I didn't outgrow it. I am meeting more and more people who thought they outgrew their milk allergy, but after testing they came to find out it just changed but didn't go away! I do hope for your little one's sake that it does go away, which is still highly probably, despite his age.
I've learned more about milk from this ordeal than I ever cared to know and tend to avoid it myself now. Rice milk is actually pretty good. :)
After everything we've gone through even if my son does grow out of the milk allergy by the doctor's standards by age ten, I still would prefer him to select the nonmilk alternatives. His body obviously didn't want the milk and he is plenty healthy without it. Any food that can make you turn patchy red with swelling and start an aweful asthma attack where the breathing remains wheezy for weeks sounds more like poison to me.
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