Buh-Bye Epi-Pen!

Today was Hannah’s appt with the allergist and it went wonderfully!  He listened carefully to what had happened in January and I didn’t feel rushed at all.  That was such a treat as some specialists rush people through and you don’t really feel listened to.  He took time with us and even though he was confident that it wasn’t caused by the nuts he offered to do a test on her and I took him up on his offer.  I knew it would give me peace of mind to know whether or not for sure if it was the peanuts or tree nuts.

Hannah was a trooper through the test and barely flinched.   The doctor explained that he was going to draw on her back and then put 4 drops of liquid that looked like water.  He then gently took her arm and with the corner of a paper package he said that he was going to make it feel like there was a kitty cat walking on her back.  First he walked the kitty cat on her arm and then on her back when he gently scratched each of the droplets.  She was on my lap facing me and he was so gentle that she hardly moved.   Way to go Hannah!

While waiting for the droplets to react (or hopefully not react) he handed Hannah a basket of large stickers for her to look at and play with.  Oh yes, Dr T knows how to entertain pre-schoolers while waiting for time to pass.  

Here you can see how the ‘control’ spots on the right are having small reactions but thankfully the peanut and tree nut tests on the left are completely negative.  Yay!!!  (What you can see on the spots on the left are the peanut and tree nut liquid that he placed on her skin to conduct the tests.  The ones on the right are the controls and they’re red with a raised centre much like the hives she was covered with last month.)

Dr. T is confident that she does not have a peanut allergy and we are welcome to resume eating peanuts, peanut butter and all the other yummy nuts.  I won’t do so right before bed the first time but tomorrow morning for breakfast we’re going to enjoy rice cakes with peanut butter which is a favourite of both of us.

The doctor’s thoughts about what caused the hives is one of two possibilities.  Either it was the eye drops she was taking for her eye infection or, it was the virus that was causing the eye infection in the first place.  He’s not able to test for the virus as it’s now gone so we’re ok with that one.  His other recommendation to be on the safe side is to skip this kind of eye drop antibiotic in the future.  There is an oral version of the antibiotic but it isn’t given to children so she wouldn’t need to be concerned until she was an adult.  That works!  All of this has been recorded in her file and sent to our family doctor too.

One other bit of good news that he shared was that if the hives were due to a virus, the reaction to that is hives, not an anaphylactic reaction so it gave me more peace of mind about the future.

So, all went very, very well!  Dr T said I was welcome to contact him anytime I had a concern.  What a blessing it was to hear that.  I’m hoping not to need to take him up on his offer but it sure was nice of him to say it!

When we walked out of his office and towards the elevator I was near floating!  I hadn’t realized how heavily the concern of a nut allergy was weighing on me until we were in the free and clear!

Thank you Dr T and, thank you Lord for Hannah not having to go through life with such a challenging allergy.  I’ll tell you I sure did learn a lot over the past 6 weeks about what it might be like to face day to day life with a potentially life threatening allergy.  It’s not the ‘marked products’ that are the concern.  It’s all the possibilities of cross contamination just by people going about their everyday lives even when trying to be careful. Sure makes me think!

Praising God for GREAT news today!