Thursday, October 29, 2009

Oops. Minor Bib Incident.

I wasn't there at the time, but Georgia had a very mild allergic reaction (some hives on her face) to skin contact with a bit of food residue on a bib that she borrowed during a playdate. The bib was the style that slips on over your head (kind of like a tea towel with a head hole cut out of it), so it probably just grazed her cheeks. We think the culprit was either sesame (from hummus) or some peanut butter. The bib's owner suspects hummus. Of course she keeps their bibs clean to normal standards, though, so she jokingly inquired when we discussed the incident later, "Is Georgia allergic to sesame vapors or something?"

I agree -- it is kind of astounding how sensitive Georgia's skin can be. Fortunately, the hives didn't even require any Benadryl and disappeared within 15 minutes. But this incident was a good reminder of how careful we have to be to prevent Georgia's ingestion of allergens.

The silver lining here is that two more adults have now witnessed Georgia having some kind of allergic reaction, thus proving that I'm not crazy. Well, you know what I mean -- it's not that I thought I was crazy, but sometimes I wonder if other people think that Joe and I are just making of all of this allergy stuff up!

Friday, October 23, 2009

Allergist Update: RAST Results

The allergist called with Georgia's RAST test results today - woo-hoo! Information!

(Bummer that I was not home and Joe answered the phone, because I wanted to hear it all first hand. I was like, "Tell me everything they said, verbatim! Every word. Did you take notes?" I'm a dork, I know.)

Anyway, great news:
  • Georgia's RAST score for egg is low enough that she is now eligible to do a supervised egg challenge in the doctor's office. If she passes the egg challenge, she'll be cleared to eat eggs!
  • Her poppy seed and chick pea scores are low enough that we are allowed to try re-introducing those foods to her at home. On the subject of poppy seed allergy: interestingly, an email that I had written to the allergist at the time of Georgia's supposed poppy seed reaction revealed that she had also been eating fish at that meal. (She used to tolerate fish but started having allergic reactions to it within the last year.) So, it is now believed that what I thought was a poppy seed reaction at the time, (since in my mind it couldn't have been the fish, since she'd eaten it many times before with no problems), was actually a reaction to the salmon that she had been eating.
Her peanut, tree nut, sesame and fish scores are all still too high for her to do food challenges on those. Maybe next year.... Fingers crossed that the scores will keep coming down.

So, if we assume for the sake of argument that Georgia is able to pass the egg challenge and successfully reintroduce poppy seeds and chick peas to her diet, then that means our list will go from:

Peanuts and tree nuts, sesame, fish, shellfish, poppy seeds, chick peas, and eggs

-down to-

Peanuts and tree nuts, sesame, fish and shellfish

(Which for the sake of simplicity could be summed up as: Nuts, Sesame, Fish. Doesn't that sound like a MUCH shorter list than what we have been dealing with? I think so.)

All in all, a great report.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

More Waiting...

Well, things went fine at the allergist, but the appointment was a bit anticlimactic.

I know, I'm an idiot, because what was I expecting? The whole mystery to be solved?

Anyway, I thought they'd be doing skin testing again, but it was just blood (RAST) testing, which means that we'll have to wait about a week for the results.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Happy Allergist Eve!

I feel like a kid on the night before Christmas. Tomorrow we go back to the allergist for Georgia's annual appointment.

Annual. So slooooow. I understand the protocol, but I just wish these things rolled around more often, because we are always craving additional information.

Tomorrow we begin to find out more - yea!