Allergic to Food – Just another parent taking on the Atopic March

What is an Oral Food Challenge?

Posted on February 10, 2019by admin

We have personally done 4 Oral Food Challenges as of this writing and we think we are beginning to understand how they work. We have had 2 successful passes and 2 fails (one is a semi-fail). Just so you know, this is considered the gold standard as far as figuring out what your child is actually allergic too. The problem with the blood tests and the skin tests is that they really are only 40-60% effective. Or, according to this article (and Dr. P- Our Allergist Immunologist) there is a 50-60% chance of a false positive occuring. Which means that the test will say your allergic…when you really are not. The reality is that there is no better test than the child ingesting the food in question and watching for a reaction.

So, on the day of the challenge you will need to bring some version of the allergen that your child can eat. If you would like to know what we brought on various ones of these, you can reference the links below and get a good idea of what it entails. Anyways, you need to bring at least one serving of that allergen. It can be in something (e.g., bread, a cookie, a muffin, a paste, etc.), but it just needs to be 1 ADULT serving size, or greater. The Allergist/Immunologist will take it from there as they separate the different quantities for consumption by your little one.

Make sure when you schedule an oral food challenge that you plan to be at the doctors for a minimum of 4 hours, and most likely for the entire day. They never go as quick as you think they will, and they almost always have some surprises along the way.

So, once you are at the doctors you will need to provide the allergic food for your child to eat. Here’s what we’ve done so far as of this writing:

Baked Egg Challenge: Made muffins with egg in them according to this recipe.

Pistachio Challenge: We made this concoction of ground pistachios and organic dates.

Wheat Challenge: We bought Wheat Chex from the store.

At the doctors they will give you an exam room that you will be in, basically for the entire time. We walk laps with our kids around the center part of the office where we take it, or this is a great opportunity to actually let your kid watch a phone or an iPad (my wife is normally against this, but the stress makes it so that we save it for this time only).

They will look over your kids skin, ask if he/she has been sick lately, and then proceed to go and divide up one serving of the food you brought into doses that equal roughly the following proportions of an adult serving size.

1/64

1/32

1/16

1/8

1/4

1/2

The following is a crucial bit of information if you are going to do an oral food challenge:

Essentially, you want your child to be starving when you get to the test!

It is crucial that they are able to do that 1/2 portion when you get to it. For our son, the first time he took the baked egg challenge, he basically passed, but they couldn’t quite pass him because he didn’t finish enough to “Pass”.

…So, we learned our lesson and we are warning you.

Ok, moving on. They will have your child eat those various portions in succession starting with 1/64 and ending with 1/2. They space each feeding 20 min apart and check for any reaction for the entire time between these portions. This is where it gets a little stressful because as you sit there, your child gets anxious, might get itchy, they could even have something as serious as anaphylaxis occur. So, your job is to distract and play with them for those 20 min until they bring in the next round of edible goodies (potential allergens). If you are lucky, your wonderful doctor will provide a play-mat and sometimes a couple toys. PRO TIP: Bring toys for your child to play with!

If your child goes the distance and gets through all of the portions listed above, that is when the true waiting starts. You have to be there for observation for 2 hours after your allergy prone child finishes the last bite of the last serving (which is that 1/2 serving size).

If there is no reaction within 2 hours…YOU PASSED!!! You will then be instructed to continue feeding that allergen for up to 3 times a week following the challenge, and eventually your child will be considered not-allergic to that food! Congrats if you make it and pass…it is a wonderful feeling.

It may sound strange to you, but it is so much fun to sit outside and shell pistachios with our little one, or to give him muffins with baked egg. We are planning to continue these as long as we are able and excited to see what else he can pass in the near future.

We hope this was informative, please feel free to ask any questions in the comments. But first, a questions from us…

Are you planning on doing any Oral Food Challenges with your allergic child?

Comment below please!

Emotional Thoughts

What is Normal Anyway?

Posted on December 19, 2018by admin

“It must be hard to have your first child have so many allergies. I wonder what it’s like have the normal one be your second child since you don’t really know what normal is, do you…”

She sort of stated with some rising intonation as if asking a question in there…but not quite. Hmm, I thought to myself for a second before responding, “No way! When you have a kid with as many allergies as J-1 does, things like my second kid (J-2) eating yogurt without profusely vomiting in 30 sec. and being covered in hives is somehow surreal to us! We get joy every time J-2 tries a new food and doesn’t react.” I guess this goes to prove her point that, yeah, I mean we really don’t know what normal is, do we?

We are not the family chowing down on pizza on a Friday night. Or the one eating Saturday breakfast consisting of pancakes, eggs, and bacon (although we do certainly enjoy our share of bacon in our family). It’s interesting what we face in life and how that shifts and then re-shapes our perspective. Having a child with allergies has truly transformed my own personal view on food and what we put into our bodies, hardships people face, taking the little things for granted (like going to a restaurant or eating at a friends home), enjoying the simple things (like when our son passed the pistachio challenge and we could add pistachios to our repertoire of household foods). Allergies are rough, don’t get me started on that….because it’s the reason this blog exists.

BUT…having a child with allergies has given me perspective on the hardships other people face on a daily, hourly basis. It has brought me a sweet joy to see my son eat healthy and to learn what foods his body CAN tolerate. It has given me a greater joy and appreciation when my husband and I get to sneak out on a date night, just the two of us and gorge ourselves on what we refer to as “allergens” now:) Which by the way, we often wake up the next day saying, “I don’t feel that great”. That’s another topic though on what “bad” foods do to our bodies and maybe a way to re-think normal ourselves.

Yes, we may not be your typical “family” with “normal” kids, but I have to say, we are learning the true essence of having compassion for others going through any challenge in life. As my children grow, they are going to be forced into an empathetic way of interacting with others who have something about them that makes them “different,” that perhaps makes them “ stand out” from the rest. I can only hope we teach them to be okay with the those differences and to be the kind of friends to others who are kind, who care. Heck, we don’t need to be normal over here in this household, we want to be extra-normal…or rather, extraordinary as we live our lives together:)

Emotional Thoughts

Noodles or Quinoa?

Posted on December 10, 2018by admin

Recently, I was throwing together that “last minute dinner” we all know too well. I happened to ask our toddler what he would prefer to have with the remainder of our meal.

His two choices were between noodles (disclaimer- these are Trader Joes gluten free noodles) or quinoa. To my surprise, the answer was…drum roll please…QUINOA!

Now, I must note that I for one absolutely love the food. I enjoy the nutty flavor, combined with the earthly aroma it creates when cooked. I like to eat it plain too, so needless to say, when my son chose quinoa, he wasn’t getting some fancy and flavorful side dish. Nope folks, he was getting that good straight-from-the-earth natural goodness.

After reflecting on my sheer delight that my toddler chose the food I would have chosen had I not given him a choice, something hit me. I was overcome by a raw, unfiltered joy.

My son chose quinoa.

Now back up for a second with me, my two year old child knows what quinoa is. He likes the stuff. He even asked for seconds at the dinner table just a couple hours ago. I looked at his plate and not only did he have a nice (second) helping of quinoa on his plate, but right next to it were the meatballs, roasted kale, and grapes. Then, to make this night even better, when I was peeling the beets after dinner (because they weren’t done in time to go with dinner), he asked for bite after bite after bite of beets. He and his dad must have eaten 2 whole beets before bedtime. The red teeth were awesome for bedtime as well:)

I just sat there embracing this joy that my child knows what real food is. Better yet, my child likes real food!

I think its easy to miss any upside of a child having allergies. Yes, I said upside…and you want to know why?…because there are upsides. Its a funny thing when we talk about allergies and all of the yucky, hard- I don’t want to be doing this, kind of stuff. The don’t even go there it hurts too much stuff I’m referring to- but rather, to see the beauty hidden in the trials. It’s the sunshine that peaks through after days of long, hard rain, pouring down. It’s the arduous training for the 50-mile race. And really, it’s that my child knows and likes to eat real, straight-from-the-earth, organic, wholesome foods. He is developing tastebuds that actually like real food. In a culture where the majority of foods in the grocery store contain ingredients I can’t even pronounce, or processes I can’t explain, my two year old is learning to eat the good stuff; the real stuff.

Now please don’t get me wrong. These are not always our meals. Somedays, it takes every ounce of persuasion in me to get him to even eat one bite of something good for him. Somedays I would give anything to let my kid eat a piece of pizza without heading to the emergency room. But today, in this moment, I feel joy.

He chose quinoa.

Food Allergy Testing Start Here

Our Kid Has Food Allergies! What to Do…

Posted on November 27, 2018by admin

Welcome to our blog!

If you haven’t figure it out yet, we are passionate about food allergies…because we have to be. Our first son (J-1), has multiple food allergies, and because of this, as a parent you are forced to both understand and help cure their food allergies. Here is a little of our back story to get to know us and our journey…

We had a healthy 3-month old baby boy that developed severe Eczema (Atopic Dermatitis), especially on his face. Looked something like this:

Dr. G (our pediatrician) prescribed some pretty heavy (steroids- Triamcinolone and the oil textured 2.5% hydrocortisone) creams and told us to use them frequently until the eczema went away. We asked him what causes eczema, and he basically tells us that it is genetic and that we should just use the creams and J-1 will get over it. My wife specifically asks about food and her breast milk (at this time he was only having breastmilk), but the doctor says that food doesn’t cause Eczema, especially not through breastmilk. We go home with creams and high hopes for getting over this.

At home, my wife googles some stuff (I know, you are all thinking that we are the idiots that use Dr. Google for everything, well sometimes it’s needed). She sees that Eczema can be linked to something called the Atopic March (Atopic Dermatitis-Food Allergy-Environemtnal Allergy-Asthma) and my wife has eczema which she thinks is exacerbated by eating gluten (she has Hashimotos which she believes has something to do with all of this). She immediately does some searches for food allergist/immunologist(s) in our area and she finds none(we liven a rural area). We then find high recommendations for an allergist that is 2 hours away by her parents house (thinking that we can go when we visit). We schedule an appointment and wait. The appointment is a couple weeks later and during those couple weeks, the creams help and get rid of the Eczema, but the minute we would stop…it always came back. Worse and worse.

So, we go to see Dr. P (if you read the blog you will get to know Dr. P even better. He’s pretty good). He states that about 40-60% of eczema is food related and can be prevented by cutting out the food. We proceed to tell Dr. P about our experience so far and he decides to administer the skin-prick test. Looked something like this, but 40 dots:

We did the entire panel (40 pricks) and found out that he was allergic to 3 things that day:

EGG

ALMOND

SESAME

So, we are thankful and sitting in the doctors office plotting how to cut out these foods from my wife’s diet, when the doctor comes back in and hands us an…EPIPEN.

At that point it GOT REAL for us and we realized the gravity of what he was telling us. At the time, we didn’t have some cosmic revelation about how our lives would be changed forever, but we realized that this was the beginning of a journey that would require us to be really involved parents in a way that is distinct. Parents are always concerned about their children, but food allergy parents have a tough time because they are asked to start to see food (usually a family and friend experience that is fun and inviting) as a stressful time, especially around other young children and extended family. This blog tells the rest of our story, but fast forward to today and…

Where are we today?

Well, we have 2 boys now; J-1 and J-2, and J-1 has multiple allergies at the age of 2. The total list includes:

Dairy

Eggs

(He can have Baked Egg because he passed the challenge)

Wheat

Tree Nuts

(He can have Pistachios only- again, he passed the challenge)

Peanuts

Soy

(seems to be over this)

Sesame

Our second son, J-2 is only 5 months old…but so far he has 1 Allergy:

EGG

We (my wife and I) write this blog often times to feels a sense of camaraderie as we do not have any immediate friends whose child has a dangerous and confirmed group of food allergies. We understand that it is on the rise, but sometimes it is nice to have little community to discuss our successes and failures. We write to hear from others their stories and hopefully not feel alone in this struggle. Feel free to join us on this journey and thanks for stopping by.