Does it count as a first if he didn't eat any?

Written 6/14/14
I have been dreading today for some time.  The oral food challenge that would finally confirm whether or not we had a fish allergy.  Feeding a food allergic person the offending food in the presence of a doctor is the last step in food allergy diagnosis after skin and blood testing.  Some consider it the only true test of an allergy.

Preparation
Here is what I was told to expect. We would arrive at the allergist office first thing in the morning (7:30am to be exact) where they would start with a skin test for the fish. Why suffer through the challenge if a skin test would reveal the allergy? If the test was negative, we would begin the food challenge, feeding Monk increasingly larger portions of fish for about a 3 hour period. If he makes it through all portions without reaction then they would monitor him for a few more hours and then send us on our way with a green light for fish!

The pure fact that you are about to feed your child something that has landed him in the hospital in the past doesn't sound scary enough?

Throw in a few more criteria.

• Don't feed the child before or during the challenge. Last meal was at 6:30pm the night before.
• Napping? Nope.
• My kid isn't entertained by TV. 

So in my head I was imagining about 5 hours stuck in a small office with a toddler who is hungry and sleepy and active yet likely to be completely bored and unentertained by anything I provide. Oh and what's for breakfast? Salmon.

For Real Now

We are in the car at 6:45am and ready to go to the allergist office with empty bellies but Monk still had a smile in his face.

We arrive at the empty office (cause no one schedules appointments for 7:30am unless you have to be there all day!) and get shuttled immediately into an exam room. Our room. Get comfy!

Up first? Skin testing (Want to know more about skin testing? Check out my previous post here.) 

Per the usual we have a positive and negative control prick along with one for salmon and one for cod (apparently the gold standard for fish allergies.) Below is a picture of Monk's back during the skin testing.

 

See that large red hive on the top left?  That would be the positive control.  The only reaction.  Yep, nothing from the cod or the salmon.  This was the second skin test for fish that Monk has had. The initial test was given shortly after a salmon dinner sent us to the ER for the first time (read that full story here) and that one too was negative.  The negative result meant that we would move forward with the oral food challenge.

By this time my Monk has been pricked instead of fed and was not too happy.  In fact, each time the door to our exam room opened, he would start crying.  This was going to be five hours of unadulterated hell adventure! 

In walks the nurse holding the smallest piece of salmon. Think flea sized. Just as we readied ourselves for whether or not we would see Baby Jekyll or Hyde when tasting the salmon, the nurse discovered a hive.  And then there were two.  And as I looked over his body I discovered dried blood behind his ears (a tell-tale sign that he reacted to something during the night.)

On went the brakes and out went the nurse and our miniscule bite of salmon.  Since he had eaten nothing, been exposed to nothing, we had to assume that the skin test caused a reaction.  We believe that he even started reacting from the cooking of the fish, as he had the first time, and that was why his eczema behind his ears had flared and bled during the night. So he essentially failed the challenge before it ever began.  

For me the result was certainly a double edged sword.  I had managed to avoid a few hours of toddler mayhem in exchange for certified allergy.  But on the bright side, a certified allergy is better than a mystery reaction, and it brought us one step closer to completing the allergy puzzle.

P.S.  I will say that I was certainly prepared for our stay and had packed not one, but two bags with essentials, new and exciting toys and more. Want a peak into those bags? My "hospital bag" list, or "the list for anyone who will be stuck in a small room with a small child for any period longer than 30 minutes", is shared here.

Dinnertime Milestone

Last night was a dinner breakthrough.

For the first time in forever (Cue dancing snowman. Oh wait, wrong story.) we all ate the same dinner.  All five of us, Monk included!

I have been wondering over the last year if and when we would get to this point. Would we get to this point?  Sure I had to make an adjustment to the recipe for his plate.  But for today I am considering it a personal victory that we were able to eat as a family together.  To eat from one pan. Can I get an Amen for less dishes?

Did everyone eat the pork and greens skillet pie, cleaning their plates with smiles on their faces?

Hahahahahahaha!

Seriously? No. I have three children whose tastes and opinions change more frequently than the weather in Texas. But Monk loved it. Monk ate seconds! And that, ladies and gentlemen is how I measure success. 

Want the recipe?  It's a Martha meal, and you can find it here.

For dairy allergies, hold the Parmesan until the end, scoop out a bit of the pork and greens as well as the grits for your food allergy monkey, then throw in the cheese, bake it in the oven and everyone is feed from one meal!

Three Signs and You're Out!

Today's post is brought to you by the number 3.

Three for the number of trips we have had to make to the hospital after allergic reactions.  Three for the number of times that something/someone sent me a warning of something wrong.

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The past few months have been a series of ups and downs.  Whose life isn't, right? And we all have those times when the lows seem to sink a bit lower, when you feel kicked when you're already down. 

It seemed like several times within the last 6 months that I couldn't get every member of our family to be healthy. Someone was always sick, and it wasn't always Monk.  His brother and sister had their fair share of fevers, colds, and such. But it was days like the morning that followed our second hospital visit, the one were we didn't get treated (see full story here), that really brought me to my breaking point.

After a night of staying up watching my youngest to make sure that he didn't have a secondary reaction, I relished sitting alone in my office, only as a second to taking a long nap. So I gladly left Monk with his babysitter and dropped the kids at school, only to be called back to the school office within the hour to pick up Punkin, who had vomited in class.  Weeks, months of shortened days, of missed days, of work not getting finished. It's the life of a mother, but this mother was done.

I was spent and exhausted.  Feeling defeated, I took her home, relieved the sitter and fell to my knees. "If you have something to tell me, please just take out a billboard!" Some days wold just go easier if He would just spell things out.

I asked for a sign. In truth I wanted it 20 feet tall and hanging just off the interstate, and maybe that was all I was willing to see.

Numero Uno
That Wednesday morning began as they all do, with no billboard propped up at the foot of my bed to tell of me of auspicious things to come, so I woke up and went to get dressed. I pulled a shirt from my closet, the same shirt that I wore on the day that we had to take Monk to the hospital for the first time. That voice in the back of my head, the one so often downplayed, said not to wear it because of its previous affiliation. I hadn't worn the shirt since that day. But it was only a shirt, and it would be silly to wear something else, right?

Second Chances
Fast forward a few hours and the kids are at school, leaving Monk with me to do the grocery shopping. We only needed a few things, but one of them was milk.

Monk has been diagnosed with a milk allergy since he was around 8-9 months old. I had begun to suspect that the milk allergy was getting worse and not better so we contact tested him in April. Basically this means that the allergist put milk on her finger and touched him with it. Below is the picture of that days reactions. The two bottom-right reactions are milk extract and regular milk, just brushed on the skin, not pricked. The result: Monk is contact allergic to dairy. He can't be touched by it.

The allergist suggested that we buy the kids cups with lids for when they drink milk, reducing the amount of milk spillage during the ever-present accidents. But we could still have milk in the house and continue to drink it? As long as we are careful. (Did you catch that last sentence?)

Back to the point...

Checking off my list, we made it through the store and the register. As I scanned my groceries I had a sudden feeling of massive anxiety come over me.  You know the kind of anxiety that ties you up in knots and renders you helpless. The kind that makes you could swear that someone you love is in danger.  I quickly thought about calling my kids school to check on them and call the hubby's work. Scenarios of the school on lock down or fire in an office building ran through my head.

I jump to extreme conclusions quite often. The hubby has on several occasions said that I needed the "jump to conclusions mat" from Office Space (actually, they apparently sell them!). Given my propensity for panicking, I talked myself down from the cliff, bought my milk and left the store.

Strike Three
With Monk down for his afternoon nap, I decided I could treat myself to a snack. Option 1: frozen coffee (aka, milk with caffeine free white chocolate flavored instant coffee mixed in) or option 2: smoothie.  With 10+ lbs of baby still clinging to my thighs I stood before the fridge arguing the finer points of going the smoothie route (less calories, fulfilling my veggie/fruit servings for the day, non-diary). The voice returned, urging me toward the frozen pineapple and kale, but again, it lost out and was shoved back into the recesses of my cobwebbed mind.

I'm Out
My hour of peace and child-free time flies by quickly and when Monk wakes up I don't even think about my glass of half-drunken coffee/milk. Given my child's innate spidy-sense for finding food, it isn't longer than 5-10 minutes when he finds my cup and dumps it on his head in an attempt to drink some.

I have no idea if any actually goes into his mouth, but everywhere it hits him begins to get covered in hives and I notice blood running down from his ear, where his eczema spots have opened up. I call our allergist immediately and sit on the phone with her nurse, describing every 2-3 minutes the state of the hives, and when it become clear that they are spreading and will soon cover his whole body, she tells me to hang up, administer the Epi Pen and call 911. All of which I do.

Trip three to the ER.

Hindsight
Looking back as we sat in the ER for a few hours to ensure that the reaction had passed, I realized that I was given a sign three time, essentially, a billboard. There is a reason that they say that "hindsight is 20/20" and I can't spend my days looking back on should've, would've, could've, but I do know that I will be burning that shirt and listening to my gut a bit more closely from now on.