allergenic redux

We’ve known since birth that L is allergic to milk and soy, but with the onset of some recent food aversions we really wanted a complete, concrete picture of what he still is and is no longer allergic to.

We met with a pediatric immunologist and for the quickest results we agreed to a few panels of skin tests, which involved a small game of “prick the skin and measure the welts”. Since we got out of bed on the lucky side that morning, we were greeted in the testing room by Angry Standoffish Uncommunicative Nurse Lady. The dirty black oil her heart pumped apparently got in the way of performing the tests properly, and we were initially told he had one hell of a rice allergy and we should run home and throw out our entire fridge’s stock of rice milk (the last milk substitute he was allowed to drink). They also claimed he was no longer even slightly allergic to cow’s milk, so we scheduled a tolerance test called a “milk challenge”, which is surprisingly not at all related to Double Dare with Marc Summers.

We hadn’t quite made it back to the returns desk at Hippie Whole Foods when we got the phone call that Angry Lady read the test upside down or sideways, and for safety’s sake we should just repeat the tests, on their dime.

The corrected results showed violent allergies to milk, eggs, soy, peanuts, and beef. All I could think of when I saw his back was the fistfight joke from our parents’ generation, “Boy, if that’s what Panel A looks like, I’d hate to see the other guy”.

Though the peanut allergy is cause for alarm, what spooked us more was the doctor’s comment that the projectile vomiting and hives that went along with his severe milk allergy were most likely an anaphylactic reaction and we’re lucky nothing more deadly serious happened.

Aside from the more obvious detriments to having potentially fatal allergies, this also means we’re doomed to years of misunderstandings with well meaning people trying to relate, where we have to explain that no, their husband’s plumber who is lactose intolerant is not in the same situation as our son with an off the wall milk allergy and no, fatal anaphylaxis is not the same as a bad case of the farts.

E and I had joked for years that with our respective ailments and horrific allergies, we should consider never having children, never actively polluting the gene pool with such obvious disdain. We never dreamed that our jokes would come half-true, and our diaper bag would be filled with hypoallergenic stuffed toys and Epipens.