my allergy man

Isaiah’s yearly appointment with the allergist is coming up next month.  Here’s a timeline of the last 3 years…

• Immediately after birth (within an hour), he had eczema all over his body
• The eczema ebbed and flowed the whole first year.  He constantly scratched behind his ears and we would find him scratching his arms/legs/belly in his sleep.
• He also coughed constantly.   At every well child check, we’d ask the ped to check his lungs.  They were always clear.  But he coughed and coughed and coughed.
• A few weeks before his first birthday, we let him have some scrambled eggs at a restaurant.  He swelled a little around his lips and cheeks and I kept thinking he was choking on something, checking his mouth, and he seemed agitated.   Within an hour, he threw up, and then seemed perfectly fine.
• Given the history with the eczema and the reaction to the eggs, our ped sent us to an allergist.
• The allergist (April 2011) tested him for the most common food/indoor/outdoor allergies.  He was diagnosed with egg, peanut and tree nut allergies.  She also suspected he had some form of asthma.  We were given inhalers, ointment for the eczema, and schooled in the proper use of an epi-pen.
• Jason and I assumed that because we knew about these specific food allergies, that the eczema and the coughing would subside once we had entirely removed the peanuts/tree nuts/eggs from his diet.  Not so much.  The scratching and the itching continued.
• At his follow up with the allergist one year later (May 2012), we retested and he did not test positive for a tree nut allergy.  Score!  One down!  Still allergic to eggs and peanuts, though.  She gave me new ideas for treating his eczema and the chronic coughing; new ointments, new inhalers.
• September 2012 – I found him banging his head on the wall in his sleep.  Hard.  I’d heard him doing it for weeks but assumed he was kicking the wall with his foot.   He had goose-egg lumps on the back of his head, indicating that he’d likely been banging his head the whole time, not his feet.  This sent me on a crazy search to find the cause, as this was new behavior and my research led me to believe it was likely food-related.  We tracked it down (we THINK) to annatto.  Never heard of it?  We hadn’t either.  It’s a natural food coloring, derived from the seeds of the achiote tree, to make food yellow or orange.  It’s considered organic because it comes from a tree.  It’s in the cheddar cheese that Isaiah had recently started eating from Trader Joes and it’s in goldfish crackers (among many other things) which they serve at his preschool.  We took it out of his diet, the head banging stopped almost immediately and he hasn’t done it since.  His eczema also seemed to improve for a short time.

So here we are, gearing up for his yearly check up with the allergist.  He has recently (once at preschool this past February and once while we were in Santa Barbara) had some minor episodes, probably due to exposure to peanuts.  Both times he was with someone else so we can’t be sure.  But he ate something that might have had traces of peanuts and both times he broke out in hives on his belly and back, cried inconsolably and then threw up.  Then he was fine.  Kind of like that first exposure to eggs.  So who knows?  Maybe he’s got something new going on?  Maybe he was just exposed to peanuts?

I go back and forth.  Sometimes I worry a lot and frantically research online, trying to find new ideas to relieve all his itching, soothe his cough, and trouble-shoot all things allergy.  Then there are days when I think eh, he’s going to fine.  There are days when he refuses food and will only drink almond milk all day and the occasional piece of fruit.  But there are worse things in the world, right?

One thing that has improved lately is his cough.  At some point (I’m fuzzy on the date), we learned that he has reactive airways, which is a form of asthma.  He doesn’t wheeze when he’s exercising but when he gets sick, especially with something respiratory, his reactive airways act up BIG TIME.  He got a terrible flu this past January and ended up coughing so hard that he threw up several times and burst some blood vessels in his eyes.  Poor guy.  But that illness and all the calls to the doctor led us to carefully using a cough suppressant (not expectorant) at night and eliminating milk from his diet.  It has made ALL the difference.  It has been such a relief.  The cough suppressant, which you are typically told NOT to use for kids under 6, has been a total game changer for him.  We’re all sleeping better now that he isn’t coughing all the live long night and it’s been a big relief all around, to have something that actually works for once.

So I’m eager to see what happens at this year’s appointment.  I’m going to ask our doc if she suggests blood work.  Would it give us more detailed information?  Maybe there are other allergies that we don’t know about?   Can she test for annatto?   What does she think of the two recent episodes of throwing up and hives?  There seems to be so much guess work involved with allergies, so much that is unknown.

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Do you know anything about bloodwork versus histamine-response testing?  Ever heard of Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Technique?   There is even evidence out there that hookworms can rid you of allergies (did you hear that NPR story?)!   Who knew?
I’m aware that our allergy issues are relatively minor and we’ve been so fortunate to avoid ER visits and we’ve never even come close to using our epi-pen.   But I sure love this guy and I’d like him to feel his best.