Testing, Testing, 1-2-3!

Last Monday Brooke had some more allergy testing done.  Thank you all of you who sent up prayers for her.  

She puts on a brave face but she had a great deal of anxiety leading up to this point.  I was so proud, she never fussed or cried.  In fact she never has, even when she was a baby and doing all of this.  

When she was about 2 1/2 she saw a picture of her back during a skin test and she said "I look like a Lady Bug."  

So here's the results.  Those small dots all down her back are airborne allergies such as grass and pollens.  As you can see nothing there is swollen which means that she will likely not react to any of those things.  Her Doctor is really puzzled because she keeps showing up negative to all the airborne stuff (even in her blood tests) even though she displays all kinds of nasal and bronchial symptoms thought the year.  He said he highly suspects within the next year she will "grow into" her allergies and they will start to present themselves during testing.  

This would be a good thing in someways because then we would know what her major triggers are and what we could have an action plan on what to avoid rather than just treating symptomatically as I am having to do now.  

That big red spot right at the bottom of her neck between her shoulders is where they put the peanut mixture.  Unfortunately as you can see, she had a pretty big reaction to that.  We were hoping for different results, at least that she was growing out of the peanut allergy but it looks like that's not the case.  

In fact by the time we got done talking to the doctor and got to the car the welt was still growing.  It's kid of hard to see in this picture but before she got in her car seat I snapped this picture.  It was welted all the way across her back between her two shoulder blades.  By this point she said it was itching pretty bad (but she was good and didn't scratch) and her poor little eye started watering and her left arm started to welt up too.  I got her home and got some Benadryl in her and she was fine.  

So that's where we are for now.  Still highly allergic to peanuts.  The Doctor said at this point there is a 1 in 5 chance that she will outgrow it on her own so we're still hopeful.  

We also went ahead and had her Doctor put her name down in the system for a trial that has been going on for the last 5 years or so.  This doesn't mean that she will be a part of the trial it just means that they can contact us and give us more information if we are interested down the line.  From what I understand and have learned about it is that they give the peanut allergic person a very small amount of peanut protein and slowly train their immune system to build up a tolerance for it.  

 Her Doctor said his friend's child is doing it and she is now up to eating 13 peanut M&Ms a day.  It's crazy and very terrifying to think about handing your child something you know could possibly kill them but we thought it would be worth talking to someone and learning a little more about it if down the line if could save her life.  

We did joke though that she might outgrow (or build up a buffer to) peanuts but she'll end up with Diabetes because of eating all those peanut M&Ms everyday.