It's just what every little boy wants for his birthday - allergy testing!
Matthew and I set out this morning for his annual allergy testing, and even though the doctors visit part was not fun, the rest of our time together was great. I love having one on one time with the kids.
I both dread and look forward to these tests each year. I am always hopeful that things will have changed and we'll find out his allergies are less severe or even gone. But I also know it's quite likely that it may be years until this happens, if ever. So I try to take a "wait and see" approach.
Today Matthew had a skin prick test. He was tested for milk, egg, casein (a protein in milk), peanut, almond, cashew, and hazelnut. After only a few minutes it became pretty obvious he is still allergic to most of these :( His egg reaction was the largest, and the others were all pretty big too. Poor kid was wanting to scratch his itchy arms! No reaction to almond, which is good, but he probably won't be able to eat these anyway since they're so often processed with other tree nuts.
For some reason I've been having a really hard time accepting that Matthew actually has a peanut allergy. That probably sounds silly; it doesn't even really make sense to me. He has had a positive blood test and a positive skin prick test (several, actually) but I know that there can be false positives. Somehow I thought this one wasn't right, he has never eaten peanut (as far as we know) so I thought that eventually they would do a food challenge and we'd find out he wasn't really allergic after all. But when I asked the doctor today I got a little dose of reality. He told me that when someone has a reaction (red bump) larger than 6mm, there is a 95% chance that if they eat that food they will have a reaction. Matthews reaction was over 8mm :( Peanut reactions can be the most severe, and that's scary. But I guess it's time for me to accept that one.
So, here we are. I always feel a bit down when he has these tests, being reminded that it's true, remembering that he could be really hurt one day by food, and that this isn't going away anytime soon...it just stinks. So today I'll be sad about it, and tomorrow we'll get back to regular life, remembering that it's not all that bad after all. There are blessings in even these difficulties, as I am reminded so often to trust the Lord with my sweet little boy.
1 comments:
We have two with FA's and it is definitely an interesting journey. Peanuts and tree nuts (but almond is finally safe!), sesame seeds, soy, egg, sunflower seeds, rice and dairy....and there is probably more...We were told based on our 3 yr olds recent skin prick test that she had outgrown all her allergies to challenge them at home. We started with peanuts and that ended bad. Not with an ER visit but with the typical throat clearing/coughing and "Mommy my throat hurts and my belly is on fire"....but she's not allergic anymore? I ended ALL food trials at home and will only ever do them at the office. Either way, she is obviously, still allergic and I don't want it to end with an ER visit.
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