Allergy appointment

We took Caiden to an Allergist today and it's official- he's allergic to dairy...and nuts. Surprisingly not melon even though his lip swelled up that one time. We think it may have just been something that the restaurant got on the melon. The milk thing we were kind of expecting since we've given him yogurt, cheese and cottage cheese a handful of times and he always vomits within a few minutes. For the skin test they take an ink pen and write the first letter of each allergen on his back then they take a liquid form of the allergen and put a dot of it next to the letter. There is no skin pricking involved. Then you wait 15 minutes to see what flairs up.

Trying to keep a 10 month old from having anything touch their back for 15 minutes is like wrestling a pig. We played Mary Had a Little Lamb a few times on the iphone, jumped around like idiots for a few minutes and fed him puffs.

They also prescribed an EpiPen for him that we need to keep handy in case he does ingest something that makes him go into anaphylactic shock. Unfortunately the test doesn't tell us the severity of the allergy so we don't know how bad it is and if that will ever happen.

You'll see from this picture that it's pretty obvious he's allergic to milk. Right in the middle there is an "M" (kind of hard to read) and you'll see to the right how bad it flared up and turned into a welt. The "H" above that is just the control, to make sure it's working.  They also tested for shell fish, soy and a few other things we've never given him. Now we go back every 6 months and do the testing again to see if/when he ever grows out of the allergy. The doc said it's an 80% chance he'll grow out of the dairy allergy and a 20% chance for nuts. Until the tests come back negative we can't give him dairy or nuts. Looks like we'll be buying soy milk for this little guy when he turns 1.