Inen's Allergies, Part 2

A while ago I promised that I would give an account of what we found out from the appointment with the allergist. So here is what went down:

At the allergist appointment we ended up not drawing blood for a RAST test, but instead the doctor recommended just doing a simple skin prick test for the biggest concerns. When we told him about Inen's previous two reactions, he concluded that the second one had to have been the cashews. They did not do skin tests for the cashews or peanuts, figuring that those are definite known allergies, and not wanting to cause a severe reaction by administering the test. What they tested for was cats, dogs, dust, wheat, soy, sesame, citrus, milk, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, almonds, and tomatoes.



So what this test, past experiences, and the previous RAST test tell us that Inen is allergic to

• milk protein (casein)


• eggs


• peanuts


• cashews


• pecans


• and walnuts

is slightly sensitive to

• almonds

and is not allergic to

• cats


• dogs


• dust


• wheat


• soy


• sesame


• citrus


• tomatoes


• and hazelnuts.

We are very relieved and thankful to find that he is not allergic to wheat, soy, or sesame (yay! he can have tahini!); and especially that he is not allergic to hazelnuts. That is the one nut that we have in abundance in our area, so we can get them from the farms and know that they were not processed with any other nut. It's also good to know that while he has allergies, they are limited, and the things he can still eat make his diet very very do-able. Praise God!

We are still going to look into a full panel of foods just so that we aren't having to do trial and error so often. There are still allergies that can pop up that we haven't tested for, so it will be good to know. In fact, we may have found a new one on Saturday while preparing for his birthday party: chocolate. We'll keep y'all updated if we find anything out about that.