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Friday, December 17, 2010

A Boy and His Allergies

Many of you may remember when Gabriel always had broken out cheeks, like in the above photo. We found out his had severe allergies when he was an infant and battled them, trying to figure out what all he was allergic to for about a year. After getting in with Dr. Elkyham in Bellingham, we began a round of food eliminations and allergy testing. Turned out he was allergic to peanuts, cats, dust and pollens and had sensitivities to milk proteins and cottonseed oils. We removed all those foods from his diet and began seeing improvements in his outbreaks (like the photo above).
Fast forward to this week and Gabriel has outgrown all his food allergies, because we were able to avoid them completely. We went to Dr. Elkyham's office this week and met with Lisa Drinkwater PAC and finished his food tests. We already knew he outgrew the cottonseed and milk allergies all that was left was the peanut test.

First they did another poke test to confirm that he is no longer showing signs of allergic reaction. The bump on the right is supposed to look like that, it's a histamine to show his level of reaction to allergens. The blotch on the left is the antihistamine and in the middle was a poke of peanut butter and as you can see there is no reaction. Praise God!  So they fed him a small amount of peanut butter. He said it was so yummy!
Then we waited and every 20 minutes he had to do a blow test to check his peak flows and make sure he wasn't having an anaphalactic (sp?) reaction to the peanut butter.
More waiting... We were there from 9:30 am until almost 4pm. Some of the staff came in after us and worked their whole shifts and went home before we did. LOL!

Doing the peak flow test.

He passed the tests and we were allowed to go home without finishing the final round of testing. With each test they doubled the amount of peanut butter and by the 9th round he was eating 3 Tbsp of it without reacting, so it's safe to say he's completely outgrown his allergy. It's so great for him to be able to eat whatever he wants. Now we just need to get his brother and sister to outgrow their allergies and we'll be golden! His big brother Joshua even bought him a giant Reece's snowman for Christmas. I know he's going to enjoy every bite of it! ;-D

1 comment:

Carrie said...

HURRAY! OH that must be such a relief! My husband's cousins were allergic to everythign growing up and I remember their euphoria when they were allowed to ease up on their diets and explore more foods without fear. It's a WONDERFUL thing and I'm so happy to hear that about your son! Praise the Lord!