Read part 1 of this account of my son’s first major allergic reaction here.
After about 24 hours and multiple doses of Benedryl, the last of the hives slowly disappeared, leaving us only with a frightful memory of the allergic reaction and a mission to find out the severity and scope of his allergies. We wondered, what else was he allergic to? Could the next reaction be fatal?
Fortunately, his one-year well baby visit was that week, so we decided to deal with it at that visit. His pediatrician referred us to an allergist. The wait time was over a month. In the meantime, we restricted all peanuts and tree nuts from his diet. We read labels carefully and prayed he wouldn’t suffer another reaction from any other foods. When we introduced milk to his diet, we noticed some redness and a few bumps around his mouth, so we added dairy to the forbidden list.
When we finally got to the allergist appointment, we spent some time going over his typical diet, the types of reactions he experienced and the foods I was suspicious of. We were then sent to the lab for a blood draw. This part was the worst for me, since I had to hold him down while they drew blood from his tiny arm. He screamed louder than he ever has and I started crying, turning my head away from the nurses so they wouldn’t see what a baby I am when it comes to these things.
The test the doctor had performed is called a RAST test. It works by detecting antibodies in the blood. Every time a person develops an allergy to a food, their body makes antibodies to fight the proteins from that food, since their body thinks that protein is a disease. When allergic reactions become dangerous, the body is overreacting, and the reaction itself is what harms the person, not the food. How many antibodies are in the blood can give the doctors a fairly good idea of how severe the allergy is.
When we got the test results back a while later, I was in the grocery store. I was shocked to find out that my son was allergic to most of the foods sitting in my cart. Besides peanuts, he tested positive for allergies to milk, eggs, soy, peas, and beef.