Poor, sweet Jonah has had a rough month. At his nine month visit, the doctor ran blood work to check for a milk allergy. The results came back indicating a very high sensitivity to milk. At that point I began eliminating all milk from my diet and that seemed to make a huge difference for Jonah. We got those results on a Thursday and on Saturday I had the poor little guy into the office again for a sinus infection. While there the pediatrician ordered a full panel of blood work to check for the most common food allergies. I called and made an appointment for him to be seen at the allergist and the Friday before that visit I got the results of the blood work - very high sensitivity to milk, egg, wheat, peanut, and soy. Whew...that was a lot to take in. On Monday we went to the allergist for a three hour visit. At that visit we were able to spend a long time with the allergist talking about all of this and Jonah had to undergo skin testing to confirm the allergies. The process of testing a little one is very tricky and not always accurate. False positives are possible but a false negative in the skin testing is absolute. Both the skin and blood tests are used to confirm each allergy, so Jonah had 32 pricks in his back with the most common environmental and food allergies. From the pictures above you can see that he did indeed react to quite a few things. The doctor told us not to let him scratch. Upon the inital pricks, Jonah cried for a few minutes but then played happily for the rest of the visit. The nurses and doctors could not believe that he was so happy and content when his back was so awful. I just had to figure that he has been so miserable for so long that he is somewhat used to it. He really was amazing! The first round of skin tests confirmed the allergies to milk, egg white, egg yolk, and peanut. Wheat was negative! Soy was inconclusive along with chicken and ground beef - are you kidding?! So the poor kid was retested for soy, ground beef, and chicken. All three came back negative.
Where we are now is a very severe allergy to egg, milk, and peanut. Along with those, he has allergies to dogs, cats, and tree pollen (just like his daddy). We sat and chatted for a while with the allergist about the implications of all of this and left feeling so blessed and relieved that he was not also allergic to soy and wheat! That night Jonah started taking soy formula and quit nursing cold turkey. As much as I have struggled with that, I know he is getting what he needs in the way of milk that is not contaminated by those allergens.
Over the next week his runny nose cleared up completely as well as his eczema. Now we are working to figure out what is still causing him to wake up at night and are trying hypo-allergenic formula instead of the soy. Since the testing he has been back to the doctor for another ear infection and a check up showing that he is healthy except for the continual night waking.
In hindsight all of this makes so much sense. The poor child spit up more than anyone could believe, had trouble sleeping at night from the very beginning, and his growth dropped from the 75th to the 25th percentile. Through it all he has continued to be the happiest little guy and just smiles all day long. It is a lot to take in and start to learn, but I am so thankful to have this information now and be able to make lifestyle changes while he is so little. Emma is excited to be our helper in keeping Jonah safe and is already asking about the ingredients in just about everything so she knows if Jonah can have it or not.
We have long road ahead of us. We now sport an epipen at all times and are learning how to be careful not to contaminate Jonah's food, surfaces he touches, and skin with these allergens. He has a 85% chance of outgrowing the milk and egg allergies and a 20% chance of outgrowing peanut. Now it is time to start the research and learn what we can to protect our little guy!
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