Monday, May 24, 2010

Our Asthma and Food allergy story

These 2 topics are near and dear to my heart since I only have a few days left in May I need to blog blog blog. For those of you who don't know M has Intermittent Asthma and ton's of allergies. Here's a little run down of his history:

At 3 months M had RSV for which he required the use of an inhaler. Now anytime he gets sick he tends to have some wheezing. The only time we really have any asthma issues is when he has a cold. That is why he was diagnosed with intermittent asthma.

At 12 months we started feeding him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. 1 month later at 13 months old I make him a pb&j sandwich, immediately while eating it he developed hives around his mouth. Several days later we see an allergist and do the skin prick testing. Sure enough M has an allergy to peanuts and strawberries. Because of his age and the likely hood of him also being allergic to tree nuts we decide it's just best to say he is allergic to tree nuts as well and keep him away.

From about 6 weeks old and on we noticed alot of belly issues with M. Constipation, reflux, insane crying. Of course he was labeled as "colic" but deep down I knew there was a bigger issue. When we saw the allergist I asked him to test M for a dairy allergy. Along with constipation, and reflux he had also developed eczema since putting him on cows milk. The allergist flat out refused to test him for me. I made another appt for him with a new allergist but it was 4 months away. I decided to switch him to Soy milk to see if that would confirm my dairy allergy suspicions. 5 minutes after drinking Soy milk he started incessantly vomiting. Yep that is a sure sign of an allergy. Eggs also were an issue for my little man. They didn't cause a flat out reaction, but they seemed to really bother his tummy.

January comes finally and we get M in to see the new allergist. I love love love her and she agreed with me to do a full allergy panel. She tested him for Dairy, Egg, Soy, Peanuts and Tree Nuts. The conclusion was that M did in fact have a dairy allergy. Soy and Egg came back negative but we decided it would be best to keep him away from them and to do an Open Challenge this summer in her office. Peanut also came back negative but since he was allergic she said it could just be a false negative and that we would treat him as if he is allergic until we could do an Open Peanut Challenge in the summer of 2011.

Whew that's alot. So for the last 5 months we have eliminated Dairy, Soy, Eggs, Strawberries, Peanuts and Tree Nuts. It was a very daunting and overwhelming undertaking at first, but seriously within a few weeks of all the eliminating I had a completely different child on my hands. He can poop again with it hurting, he can sleep for longer then 3 hours at a time. He no longers cries for hours on end. Finally having answers has truely been a blessing.

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