Jenny’s Blog

Peanut Allergies

Friday, November 20th, 2009 | | 1 Comment

It turns out Ethan has peanut allergies. I’m not too surprised since he had a bad reaction to a bite of a Butterfinger bar (his eye swelled shut and turned purple). Luckily we had Benadryl nearby, and everything was fine. His second experience with peanuts was after I ate some, I touched his head, and he broke out in a rash on his head. Once again, Benadryl to the rescue…

Needless to say, we took him in for allergy testing. Apparently for suspected peanut allergies, they don’t do skin prick tests - the doctor said it’s too risky with how severe peanut allergies can be. They had to draw blood, which was traumatic (for Ethan and me!), but we just got the results back.

It turns out, for the testing scale used, a score of “17.50 kU/L or greater” is a very high reaction, and Ethan scored 18.60. We have to keep him away from anything containing peanuts or peanut oil, but luckily if peanut dust is in the air, it won’t affect him (like, say, on airplanes when they hand out peanuts). It’s kind of scary since peanuts seem to be everywhere, but we’ve always got Epi-Pen and Benadryl with us. It’s just good to be aware - now I’ll need to be extra vigilant. Preston outgrew his peanut allergies, so maybe Ethan will get lucky and do the same…

(PS He has moderate allergies to almonds, sesame seeds and soy as well…)

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