Ethan

This post is completely about Ethan. Wow, that may be a 1st.

We had his follow-up appt today. The results were very encouraging. There were still the obvious no-no's like eggs/peanuts/etc. There were some false positives (he eats them just fine, but tests came back showing positive). But, there were several where his levels had gone down to almost nothing. Of those we decided to try sweet potato, lettuce, and sunflower seeds. After we do those challenges, we will sit down and discuss which ones we will try next.

Some interesting numbers for anyone interested: on the skin prick, egg was the worst by far, but on the blood test, egg showed 4.68 (3 being a pretty severe allergy) and peanut showed over 100! It's amazing that the skin prick didn't show that kind of reaction compared to the egg. Green pea used to be over 4 last year and now it is below 1. Orange showed 1.62 and he just recently had a reaction to it, so we know he is still allergic, and yet soybean was 1.87 (so higher than the orange) and yet he eats it everyday just fine. Soy is an obvious false positive, even though he was allergic to it as a baby. Corn was 3.4 (so almost as high as the egg) and we have corn tortillas at least once a week without any problems-so another false positive. Tomato went down a fraction of a point, so that might explain why he can have very small amounts of it without a reaction. He has been able to eat 1 tsp or less just fine, but any more than that and he has a reaction. Cantaloupe is almost non-existent (0.15), but he reacts to it more b/c of the cross reaction with his ragweed allergy than the actual food itself. Any of the melons will do this-you have an allergic reaction to the food when you eat it b/c the receptor sites think it is ragweed, so all melons are pretty much out for us until he can start allergy shots in a few years.

E has to start using his albuterol more. The Dr. heard way too much wheezing today. (It probably has a lot to do with me digging in the yard yesterday. He wouldn't listen when I told him to stay away from the dust.) We have to do the breathing treatments for the next 2 days and if he still needs it after that, we have to go back to the pulmicort-yuck. He hated that stuff and I don't like giving him steroids all the time. He had total mood swings and anger issues when he was on it last year, so I hope it doesn't get to that point.

Other than that, he's doing great! Hooray for developing immune systems!