Friday, June 27, 2008

Allergy Testing-Part #1

(Although I use this blog primarily for my scrapping adventures, I wanted to get into writing what happened yesterday...from my point of view...in hopes to one day put on a scrapbook page.) We have been putting off official allergy testing for our daughter, Madison, for years. We have suspected since her first birthday that she has a food allergy, and specifically a peanut allergy. On her first birthday, we had the typical little cake (which was homemade in this case) that you set in front of the 1 year old and let them dig in. She did, and suddenly hives starting appearing everywhere that the cake had touched. As soon as we washed the cake off, the hives starting going away. Several months later, we were having chili, and it's a midwestern custom to serve peanut butter sandwiches with it. So, we gave Madison a bite of the sandwich, and she almost immediately began vomiting and got hives all over her body. The third instance, she was at church in Sunday School, and they were doing crafts, where they put peanut butter on pinecones and add birdseed. Well, the helpers had peanut butter on their hands and had washed it off - but because Madison was crying about something, they picked her up. Where they had touched her under her arms immediately broke out in the biggest hives. The last instance we've had was from a bottled V-8 smoothie. I had read the label to make sure it was clear, and it looked OK. But Madison drank it, and again, got hives all over her body and had a little trouble breathing, but just when I was going to whip her up & take her to the emergency room, she started to get better. All of these instances pointed to Madison having some kind of food allergy. And she is petrified of needles, so we had put off the allergy testing - until this summer, it became apparent that it was time to do it. Her school wouldn't acknowledge her allergy until we had it in writing from a doctor, and the chances we were taking just were not worth putting her life in jeopardy. So, yesterday, she went for allergy testing.

1 comment:

Patricia said...

Ok, uncle, I give! You win the excuse contest hands down. Now let us know how Madison did through it all.