Nathan's Allergy Update

Nathan had his yearly allergy testing today. 

There was only one piece of good news. He's grown 3 inches in the last year! Even though he's unable to eat an entire food group, he's still growing normally. It's a lot of work to make all his food from scratch  for every meal, but it's working. He's growing! Plus, we managed to go another year without a serious reaction. It takes a LOT of work and diligence to keep him away from his allergens, but there's really no other choice. It's kind of like a part time job that's been forced upon me. 

The bad news is that nothing has changed or improved. The doctor actually made me cry when he confirmed what I've already suspected. But to hear the doctor say that Nathan will never outgrow the milk and egg because his allergy is so severe is just so heartbreaking. He said 80% of kids outgrow egg and milk by age 5 and Nathan is nearly 8 with no signs of improvement. He will be one of the 20% that never outgrow.  We can live pretty easily without peanuts and tree nuts. It's just incredibly hard to live a "normal" life without being able to eat anything with milk or eggs. 

His food allergies remain the same for documentation. Milk, eggs, peanuts, cashews, hazelnuts, and pistachios. All are serious enough that they could produce an anaphylactic reaction. 

We had him tested for environmental allergies for the first time. We could always  tell he was allergic to things. He gets hives from grass sometimes. When we visit homes with pets, he always comes out sniffy and his eyes are a bit puffy. We just got confirmation today. The doctor tested for the 10 most common environmental allergies and he is allergic to 9 of them! 

He is super allergic to many things! Cats, dogs, birch, cottonwood, grass, kochia, and russian thistle. He's less allergic to sagebrush and mold. The one thing he's not allergic to is dust mites. Woohoo. 

For us, environmental allergies are the least of our worries. They pale in comparison to dealing with the food. 

One last piece of good news. He still shows no signs of asthma. There is usually a  pretty clear 3 part pattern with people with allergies. It starts with eczema, progresses to food/envrionmental allergies and eventually asthma. Asthma is the last piece of the puzzle and Nathan still doesn't have it. The doctor said the most important thing we can do is keep him away from pets as being around pets too much could start to cause more stuffiness and breathing problems and we do not want to get started down the road to asthma if we can help it! 

Considering Jeremy had asthma (outgrown) , and Grandma Jane has asthma, the genetics are not looking good no matter how hard we try. We'll just continue to keep our fingers crossed that we'll get lucky in ONE aspect of this horrible disease. We already have such horrible bouts with eczema (Elizabeth)  and the food allergies with both kids. The doctor told us that 90% of the kids that die from food allergies also have asthma. So until the kids get the asthma diagnosis, maybe I should try to worry a little less.