Another day at the Allergist

Both boys had appointments today with the allergist. I think we left with more questions than answers.

For Caden's mucous stools the doc said try pulling soy (which we just reintroduced 2 months ago). If that doesn't fix the problem pull rice. We're supposed to go back in two months. If pulling rice doesn't fix it then we'll go to scopes.

Ryan went with me and asked how Caden compares to his other patients. The allergist said in his 10 years of practicing Caden is in the top 5 for most foods pulled. I could have gone forever without hearing that.

And he said Caden is not currently a candidate for the emerging desensitization treatments. Too bad. They are seeing good results with those.

Eric's skin prick test was 100% negative. Not even little tiny reactions. The test is 90% accurate for negative results. So Eric likely doesn't have IgE allergies (the kind Caden has). But based on the reactions we've seen and our family history, the allergist thinks Eric still has non-IgE allergies. The problem is there is no test to confirm those. Its all trial and error based on reactions. So he gave me instructions on how to retrial everything I've pulled so far (basically overload one thing at a time) and to bring him back in two months with the results.

The hard thing with trial and error is getting a strong enough reaction to diagnose the allergy. Was that just spit up or was it puke? Typical runny newborn stools or diarrhea? Fussy tired baby or one who is having stomach pains? So I've got to eat enough of the food to produce an intense reaction in order to consider it an allergy.

He said Eric likely doesn't have as many allergies as Caden, "because it would just be unfair if lightning struck the same family twice." Hopefully we have some success with these trials, because right now we've pulled pretty much everything Caden was ever allergic to. Honestly, I'm a little excited by the prospect that we may get a few things back. Unfortunately, I was pretty slow to pull stuff so I'm not holding my breath.