Nuts...

Since Josh was a few months old he's had eczema.  We've always assumed this was caused by a food allergy and Margaret spent a lot of time avoiding certain foods to contain it.  After lots of trial and error we concluded that Josh was allergic to soy and peas and we assumed he might be allergic to other legumes.  When Josh turned a year old we had to get blood drawn for other tests so our pediatrician agreed to include blood allergy testing.  Unfortunately we were right he is mildly allergic to both peas and soy. The results also showed that he has a very high allergy to peanuts.  This surprised us because we had sort of ruled out peanuts and Margaret has still been eating them. Fortunately we have not given Josh any peanuts yet, but he might be getting exposed through Margaret eating them.  We have no idea how much of the peanuts make it into the milk so we don't know if he has really come into contact with them or not--nor do we know what kind of reaction he would have if he were to be exposed. His level of allergy based on the blood test is extremely high, so our pediatrician was very concerned.

We immediately made an appointment with an allergist to get more information and to get an EpiPen.  We talked with the allergist for over an hour giving him a history of Josh's reactions and talked about what might happen.  The tests prove Josh is allergic and very likely to have a reaction but it does not tell us what that reaction will be. Based on his blood levels he has a greater than 95% chance of having a "clinically relevant" reaction. But he might just get a small rash or he could go into shock.  Unfortunately there are no definite answers.  There is a lot of new research on peanut allergies but none of it is conclusive.  What is interesting is doctors are no longer 100% recommending avoiding peanuts, even with an allergy.  New research is showing that giving small amounts of peanuts can help teach the body to not react to peanuts. This research is way too preliminary at this point though.

For now we are going to avoid peanuts and see how things go.  We are trying to get used to our new situation and trying to not be too stressed about everything Josh comes into contact with.  We were not particularly careful before about peanuts and he hasn't had a problem.  That being said we are going to be much more careful going forward and always make sure we have the EpiPen with us just in case.

Josh's daycare is nut free and we talked to the people there.  They were very helpful and made us feel better about our new nut concerns.  Josh now has an EpiPen that will live at daycare in case he has a problem but hopefully it will never be used.

It's been a rough week for us but we are trying to get used to the new situation.  Josh is still his normal smiley happy self and even enjoyed playing with the EpiPen box :-)

Reading about the EpiPen

Watching me shovel snow

Good to the last drop

Still our happy little boy!