Allergies suck.

So I got the call I'd been waiting for from the allergist today. Last week, I was eager to hear the results. Now I think I could have waited a long time without hearing this. Basically, I had Chas tested for treenuts just to see if we could slip him a pecan or an almond. The results were worse than I imagined. He's allergic to all tree nuts except pine nuts. (Pesto is now OK, which is a blessing I suppose.)



Yes, that's a tear you see.


But wait. It gets worse. His egg allergy seems to be persisting. And worse yet, his peanut allergy has gotten dramatically worse. When he was diagnosed, he was at 40.60 for peanut. A year and a half later that had dropped to 8.5 -- a dramatic drop that led us to hope he would be in that minority that outgrows it. A year after that, it was up slightly to 12.9 -- still in the same "class" and no reason to lose hope. This year it's 45. Higher than ever and way past the point where you let yourself dream of outgrowing it. What I don't know is what this means. Is he more sensitive? That seems to be a resounding yes. But will his reactions be worse? That seems to be a resounding maybe. Severity of reactions does not seem to correlate with sensitivity, which is what the blood tests measure. However, peanut reactions have a nasty tendency to get suddenly worse. Which means we may use the epi-pen yet.

I know it's not cancer or diabetes or any of the other awful, horrible things that can happen to children. But it's scary and it makes my boy sad way too much. I keep thinking about a study I read when he was diagnosed that said essentially that children with diabetes have a better quality of life than children with peanut allergy because diabetes gives them a level of control while peanut allergy means you never know when something life-threatening and scary as hell is going to happen. Also, kids with diabetes have darned few times when they absolutely cannot have something. This was Chas' reaction when a mom brought snack to a field trip in violation of the no-nuts rule chocolate granola bars with peanuts and almonds.)