Update for May

Meredith saw the allergist on Wednesday. She informed us that Meredith's allergy (RAST) testing was great with the exception of three things. Meredith is allergic to eggs. She has a mild allergy to beef, wheat and bananas. We had already removed the eggs from her diet several weeks ago because someone from the allergist's office called to tell us to do so until we saw the doctor again to review the results.

While we were there, she also talked with us about Anna. Anna has been doing well for the past few months. We reviewed her latest lab results. They showed that in addition to her already known allergens, Anna is also allergic to turkey, oranges, banana, corn and sesame. We already knew about the sesame. Her allerginicity to banana and corn is much lower than some of her other foods.

While she is allergic to turkey, the doctor explained to us that some of the protein is changed when the meat is cooked. Some patients with an allergy to that meat are able to eat it in its cooked form.

When Anna saw her gastroenterologist a month ago, he advised us that it was okay to feed her nuts and peanut butter although her testing results showed several nut allergies. He felt that they were low enough to not cause any concern.

The allergist strongly disagreed with him on Wednesday. She explained that Anna already has formed antibodies to the several nuts and peanuts (not actually a nut....a legume). The longer she continues to consume these, the longer she will continue to build more antibodies to them until eventually she produces a strong reaction to them, possibly an anaphylactic reaction. The doctor explained that unlike almost all other food allergies, the allergy to nuts NEVER goes away.

So, our next step is for Ryan and I to sit down this weekend and make a list of what MUST be removed from both of the girls' diets. Then we will make a list of foods that are lower allergens that we will remove some.

We recently stopped giving Anna rice milk and switched to soy milk. She's been okay on it so far, but she doesn't really drink much milk, in any form, anyway.

We will retest Anna for all of these allergies around the age of 9. We are now able to stop giving the Zyrtec every day. If her skin itching returns we will have to keep her on it every day again.

So far it's getting better! She sees her pulmonologist in a few weeks.