You know what they say about the 4th child?

Well, I don't know what "they" say but I have always said the 4th one doesn't ever do anything the way I think he should and he's got a mind of his own. He also has to be so different that I cannot just put things in cruise control and say...hey I've got this covered, seriously I've had 3 other children, they're all the same right?

WRONG!

The pediatrician called back today with partial results on the food allergy panel she ran on Monday. After the blood draw they inject his blood with known food allergens and see if they can trigger a histamine reaction in the blood. We ran this panel back in March 2008 after his "Disneyland" episode where he had to be rushed to the hospital and shortly after that his eyes swelled up at Gymnastics. At that time the only thing that came back positive was cat.

Well, after our trip home from Palm Desert 2 weeks ago, complete with swollen, lips, eyes, ears, hives and difficulty breathing they decided to run another blood panel on food allergies only (since his lips swelled) and that has come back positive to Walnut (moderate) and Shrimp (low).

So, we must ask ourselves, why didn't these come back on the same panels over a year ago? Well, apparently if you are on steroids when you have the blood drawn you skew the results of the lab work. He was on steroids because he was on mega breathing treatment doses after the "asthma" attack at Disneyland. As a matter of fact he just now got off those steroids this month after being on it for over a year now.

Walnuts and Shrimp are all we know for now. There's additional lab work ordered called a RAST. The RAST will tell us exactly what nuts he's allergic to and the severity of the allergy. But, it's commonly recommended that once you test positive to one tree nut you should avoid all tree nuts. Peanuts, however, are a ground nut and those are safe...but, they disclaim that by saying you still should avoid peanuts because you can develop that allergy too after repeated exposure.

Shrimp was a major shocker here. I'm not sure if that just means shrimp or all shellfish at this time.

http://www.allergicchild.com/tree_nut_allergies.htm

http://foodallergies.about.com/od/nutallergies/p/treenutallergy.htm

http://foodallergies.about.com/od/seafoodallergies/p/shellfish.htm

http://www.allergicchild.com/shellfish_allergy.htm


With the holiday weekend approaching and a soccer tournament (complete with family style potluck) coming up in 2 days I am completely freaked out that Q will accidentally ingest something he doesn't know he's not supposed to have or something that contains something I don't know to even know to think about right now. Pass me the bubble wrap please....