Food Allergies

We recently had Colette tested for food allergies because of her projectile vomiting after eating oatmeal and the hives she gets when eating peas. Strangely, she did not react to either oats or peas on the skin prick test. But she did react to 10 other things, including egg whites, milk, peanuts, wheat, rice, rye, cashews, almonds, mustard greens, and string bean mix.

What does all this mean? We’re not sure yet. For now, the allergist said to avoid feeding her any of these items and told me to cut milk, eggs, and peanuts from my diet since I am breastfeeding her. We have a follow-up appointment with the allergist on Thursday to hopefully get the myriad of questions we have come up with answered. We also have an appointment with another allergist next Tuesday to get a second opinion.

From our research, we have found that if you don’t have a reaction to something on the skin prick test, it is pretty certain that you are not allergic to that item. She didn’t react to beef, pork, chicken, turkey, lamb, black walnut, hazelnut, chocolate, sesame seed, pecan, coconut, lima bean, soy, sweet potato, white potato, and as I mentioned before, oat or green pea. She also didn’t react to whole egg, but I’m not sure what that means for her diet in the long run since she did react to the whites. Zakk was really relieved she didn’t react to the hazelnuts or chocolate. He says it proves she is his daughter.

Conversely, if you do react to something (see the 10 items listed above), there is a 50-60% chance that was a false positive reaction and you are not actually allergic to that item. That seems like a lot of room for error. Hopefully it will turn out she is not actually allergic to all of those things and we will be able to breathe a big sigh of relief.

I was so impressed with how well Colette did as the reactions were occurring on her back. She honestly didn’t even seem to notice! I remember when I was tested for some non-food allergies several years ago and the itching on my forearm where they pricked me with cat dander, dog dander, ragweed, dust mites, and tree pollen was so intense I wanted to rip my arm off! Although she isn’t actually smiling in the photo above, she was plenty smiley and engaging during the appointment. The allergy doc told her he really liked her and said she was such a sweet baby (awww shucks…we agree!) and the physicians assistant was equally smitten.