Day 48: "Just a Little Peanut Butter"

It's been over a year but these images haunt me still.

Owen a few minutes after eating some peanut butter, he was 1.5 years old, and usually spit PB out immediately, so I gave him bologna that day, and he took a slice of Noah's PB&J sandwich and was eating it, saying; "mmm good!" We had no reason to believe he was allergic to PB, just though he didn't care for it. I took this photo to ask some mom friends on FB what they thought this might be. When a few suggested food allergy, I knew something was wrong, and when the red was up above his face, and he was rubbing himself on the ground, something was not right about this. His breathing was fine, so I got my sister in law to come sit with the others and I took him to Urgent Care.

Here he is in the exam room having Nebulizer treatments. This was after we walked in, signed in and he vomited all over me and himself and began getting wheezy. He had some steroids and Benadryl to stop his reaction and did the nebulizer a few times. We were sent home with a script for an EpiPen and told to follow up with our Pediatrician ASAP.

Here he is a month after his reaction at his first appointment with his allergist. He was such a trooper for a very long and exhausting appointment. We had to retell the events of his reaction 3 times that morning and then they were to proceed with testing for allergies by doing a skin test for peanuts, all tree nuts and we had them add eggs because we had a small suspicion that he might have an oral allergy to them.

Here is his back about 5 minutes after she pricked him with all the allergens. The 2nd one down on the top left is peanuts. I don't recall what the second on the right is, but that one was pretty bad as well! The one on the bottom right was eggs. After we also had blood drawn it was determined that he is indeed allergic to peanuts, tree nuts and had a mild egg allergy. We were told to carry an EpiPen at all times, avoid peanuts and tree nuts and concentrated eggs (he could have eggs baked in things like cookies/cakes etc) and come back for a follow up in a year unless he has a reaction before then.

Today was our one year follow up. We will do blood work on a yearly basis to determine if his levels have decreased and if he will ever be a candidate for an in-office food challenge. We are planning to do one of these challenges for the concentrated eggs this year some time. He's quite your typical 2.5 year old picky eater, so I don't know that he'd even eat the eggs if he was given them. So we'll start offering eggs to everyone else on a weekly basis and see if he shows interest and then schedule the challenge. This is something they want to do in the office, because they aren't sure if he will react or not, so it's better to have the doctors and nurses there to monitor the challenge. As far as the peanut/tree nut allergies, we know for sure he's got an anaphylactic allergy to peanuts, he's had a reaction to prove so. Tree nuts have never been a part of his diet to this point, but until his blood work shows that he's very low, or negative for them, we will continue to avoid them. We will know his results in a few days, and will go from there. The allergist, based on his testing thinks he may be a lifer with the peanut allergy. So we are doing our best to keep him safe, and continuing to be a nut free home.