Welcome to my blog!

This blog is a journal of our struggles with food allergies and eosinophilic gastrointestinal diseases (EGIDs). ("DD" stands for "dear daughter", so whenever you see it in the blog it is referring to my daughter and our personal experience.) My hope is for this blog to be a source of information and support to others who might be trying to investigate, diagnose, treat, or live with, food allergies and EGIDs. Feel free to leave comments with suggestions or requests of what you would like to see on this blog. This is a work in progress. :)




Month 14

November 2008

Yikes- it's the middle of December and I haven't even written a November post yet! Ok, let's see if I can remember all the events of November.

Let's see... to follow up from my last post- our CLO trial passed!! But after 2 weeks of taking the Gastric Complex enzymes, I started to react to them. :( I started brewing and drinking water kefir, and that is going well. DD does react to it directly, but she seems to be ok with it through breastmilk, so I am continuing to drink it every day for a healthy, natural source of probiotics. I finally started back on my calcium supplement, and that also passed (TwinLab Calcium Citrate Caps, but I take them without the capsules because they're gelcaps. I did verify with the company that the calcium and magnesium are natural earth sources, and the citric acid is fermented beet sugar.) I started making bone broth with lamb bones (since our chicken trial failed and that was my source of bone broth), and made a special order through our co-op for a lamb liver, which DD and I have been enjoying.

Perhaps the biggest news of November is this- we got a referral from our new pediatrician to see a new allergist, and had our first appointment with her this month. I explained that I was fairly certain that DD didn't have any "true" (IgE/anaphylactic) allergies, but that I just wanted to make sure I was covering all my bases and not missing anything. And because her RAST bloodtest had shown a slight positive for peanuts earlier this year, I wanted to see if that was still positive or if the numbers had changed. Basically, I wanted to know how paranoid I needed to be around peanuts and nut products. She explained that allergy testing wasn't really that accurate at this age, so she tries to avoid it. But after much urging, she agreed to do a SPT (skin prick test) for 4 things: dairy, soy, peanuts, and corn. DD did fine with the test- the pokes didn't phase her at all. They came back to check the skin after 5 minutes, only to find that she reacted to ALL OF THEM!!! The dairy reaction was especially huge. I was shocked- just blown away. This was completely unexpected. The allergist assured me that there is a chance for false positives, and that the reactions weren't all that bad- all except the dairy, which was HUGE. But I have seen her react to all those things (except peanuts- she's never been knowingly exposed), so I'm highly doubtful that the positives were false. So I am now a very unhappy member of the EpiPen carrying club.... We got a prescription for the Epi Jr. and a prescription for some compounded corn-free benadryl, after I explained to the allergist and nurse that NO, DD could NOT have Benadryl after the test because it contains corn, and she just had a positive reaction to corn. Everyone in the office seemed surprised, but glad that I had done my research. The ignorance of medical professionals about food allergies can be so frustrating!!

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