After explaining to our pediatrician what happened yesterday with Witt's reaction, here's the gist of our conversation:
Dr: "Well, I've been doing this for 9.5 years and I guess this is the interesting part of the work, where you get something unexpected and unusual."
I was a little surprised, "You mean this isn't a normal reaction?"
Dr: "Not for a milk allergy. If we were talking a peanut allergy, I'd say it was normal."
Me: "Well, now that you mention peanuts, Nathan did have peanut butter on crackers yesterday in the living room. He could have easily fed Witt, smeared PB on him, kissed or hugged him after eating some himself. Plus, Jeff tells of a time that he kissed Witt hive-looking whelps appeared on his cheek. Jeff had just eaten PB and had a glass of milk."
Dr: "To be on the safe side, I'd get all the PB out of your house until we get this figured out a little bit better."
So, we have two main suspects, PB and milk. I don't know which to hope it is. We go to an allergist next Thursday. In the meantime I'm going crazy watching everything I touch and washing everybody's hands thinking it really could be anything.
I'm also going to have to get used to carrying an epi-pen with me everywhere I go. I took it out of the box to read the directions and the thing looks to be half the size of Witt (not really, but what a big dispenser!). I hope I'll never have to use it.
Witt has been doing fine, but a little cranky today. I had a hard time letting him fuss himself to sleep being worried that he was fussing because he was swelling up again. I know it's crazy, but it's just so raw right now.
Please keep us all in your prayers as life has been unbelievably turned upside down these last few weeks with a broken leg on Nathan, the death of a great man, Witt's allergic reaction, and just the everyday bustle of life and doctor's appointments to keep up with. I'm ready for life to slow down. Hopefully it's ready to slow down, too.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
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2 comments:
Hi - a friend of Laurel's here,
I am dismayed (though not surprised) that your doctor did not consider this a normal reaction for a milk allergy. My 7-year-old is allergic to milk. We found out when I fed her one teeny bite of cottage cheese at nine months old and she immediately started itching, coughing, sneezing, and broke out in hives all over her face and swelled like a pumpkin...IMMEDIATELY. It all happened so quickly I did not know what to do or what was happening. We were very fortunate - in hindsight I should have rushed her to the ER.
Up until then she had never had milk products but had other problems because of the cow milk protein (the part that causes the reaction) passing through my breastmilk, but I could not figure out what was causing these other problems until this missing link was filled in and I started doing some research.
Don't toss out the possibility of milk while you are considering peanuts - Hannah is allergic to both also.
Of course, when I informed the pediatrician of what had taken place (an anaphylactic allergic reaction) I was referred to an allergist who in turn, in no uncertain terms, told me I did not know what I was talking about and that she was more than likely not allergic to milk - he did not want to even administer the test. Needless to say her test was off the charts and he apologized (we still quit seeing him).
I hope that you will feel free to email me (see my blog for address). There is so much more information and support available now than there when we started out seven years ago; however, there is a lot of misinformation out there and I have found that most doctors and people in general are very ill informed about milk allergy especially.
There is much more I could say about this but in the best interest of this blog comment I will stop for now. Again, I hope you will feel free to email me.
ahhh Poor Witt it is the Alabama atmosphere just come back to GA. haha I will be praying you find answers to all of your questions and this will be easy to treat. Bless his heart!!
Kim White
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