Allergies

The day before we were supposed to leave the Philippines our son had a very very bad allergic reaction to a peanut butter cookie. Not 5 minutes after eating the small cookie, his face started becoming red, he begun rubbing his tongue something fierce and he started scratching his skin like mad. It was a good thing his Tita recognized that allergy signs and she and my wife drove our son to the clinic in the village.

The doctor there gave him a shot of Benadryl, put him on a nebulizer and they waited until the swelling came down and my son went to sleep. He was still sleeping when they returned him home but his face was still a bit puffy.

He was quite alright that night and back to his lively self, albeit with some swelling. It was still a very scary thing that happened. We've never given him peanuts at all because we always thought it would aggravate his eczema so we never really expected such a nasty reaction.

Needless to say we had to quickly change our flights and push it back a few days. The next day, we went and got an appointment for him with an allergenist. We thought we could do a prick test then and there to determine how bad his allergies were but she suggested we have it done in Australia as the allergens were different here.

Anyway, the first thing we did when we got back home was to get a referral to see a pediatric allergologist. It took as almost more than a month to book an appointment.

Our first visit to the doctor wasn't too bad. We just discussed our son's case to him and he planned out what tests to give. The prick tests came in the next visit. To be honest, it wasn't that bad either. The hard thing was keeping our boy still and he really didn't have any problems with the pricks he got.

The nurse first marked his back with a pen to indicate what allergens should go where. Then his mom and I kept him on his front as the nurse started placing drops of allergens on his skin and lightly scratched it. The nurse was new to the job and it took forever before we were done.

After a few minutes, the bumps started to appear on his back where the pricks were. It was a bit weird to see it and disappointing to finally be hit with the reality that indeed, he had allergies. To a lot of things.

Our boy had an allergic reaction ( marked as 10, I don't know if it's the highest ) to peanuts and a few other things like pollen, moulds and dust mites. He had also mild reactions to prawns and sea food. The good thing though is the doctor didn't advise us to carry epipens. That shot of adrenalin that parents keep handy so their highly allergic children don't die.

I wasn't looking forward to a life of being an epipen carrying parent and it was good to know we wouldn't have to carry it just yet.

SO what does this mean? Well, we really have to keep him away from peanuts. It also means discouraging him from playing on grass or sand for too long as this would aggravate his eczema or skin rashes. We're taking steps to get rid of some of the dust catching stuff in our house like drapes and the carpet. But we think it's worth it so our boy wouldn't have to suffer those damn skin allergies anymore.