Allergy Update

Today we made it to the allergist to follow-up after Cole's scarey ER visit and other possible sensitivity concerns. They did a prick test of the most common food allergies on his back and found significant reactions to milk, egg, and peanuts. Now, the milk and egg are ones that are commonly grown out of. In fact, I'm quite certain the other kids would have tested positive for those - at least Paige. However, the peanuts are a bit of a different story. The doctor (a U of I alum and big Illini fan - love him already) said that growing out of that is quite rare. This prick test does not tell us anything about the severity of the allergy. For example, he may very well be able to tolerate eggs in foods/baked goods, but just not straight eggs. No big deal. But, we play it safe for now. The fact that he did appear to have some sort of anaphylactic reaction to something tells us that he has the potential for a strong reaction to one or more of these.

Therefore, the action plan is to avoid those foods for the next year completely. We are armed with an epinephrine shot and nebulizer if he does appear to have an anaphylactic reaction to something in the meantime. Then, we have a blood test to determine if these allergies still remain there and to what extent. He referred me to this site for more information:
http://www.foodallergy.org/ in case anyone is suspecting allergies in their own kids. While this means more vigilance with respect to what Cole eats, it feels good to be armed with information.