Friday 20th November 2009
by JennyIt 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…)
[...] few months ago, I wrote about Ethan’s newly diagnosed peanut allergies. Now, as it turns out, he is severerly allergic to pistachios. We were sharing pistachio gelato [...]
Organic Mamma – Thank you so much for the book recommendation – I will have to check it out. There has to be an explanation as to why food allergies have increased so dramatically among children over the past few years. There isn’t anything scarier than a child not being able to breathe!
I just saw your family featured in CNN.com’s article about allergies being on the rise, and just HAD to write and tell you about a book that really helped our family with this issue! It is called “The Unhealthy Truth” by Robyn O’Brien. Like the movies “Food, Inc” and “The Future of Food,” this book exposes how American corporations routinely taint American crops with additives that are illegal in other countries because they are toxic to our immune systems (but they get away with it because their lobbyists use “fake” studies to prove them harmless). Also, this author uncovered how those same corporations are the sponsors of FAAN (Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network) and other organizations that are supposed to inform families about allergies but instead disseminate false information in order to keep people buying their products! You can see summaries on this book on YouTube and Amazon, but I highly recommend reading the entire thing, as my kids were cured of egg and peanut allergies once we switched to organic eggs and non-genetically modified peanuts! Here is a link to her book: http://www.robynobrien.com/books.html
Good luck to you in the quest to cope with food allergies–I know how hard it can be!
My Carter also had a peanut allergy (actually it may have just been peanut butter, I never had him tested). I took him to my holistic chiropractor, and in about a year his allergy was gone. Let me know if you want to try him out. To me it was well worth it.