The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Today was Matthew’s annual visit to the allergist. You might think that once allergies are established that nothing is going to change but that is not so, hence the yearly visit. New this year was a blood test that tests an individual’s allergic response to separate proteins in an item rather than just the allergic response to an item as a whole. Appropriately, this is called component testing. This kind of test is relatively new, just a year or so old. The benefit is that there are certain proteins within the peanut (or whatever else) that are more likely to cause severe allergic reactions while others are less likely to cause real problems. So a person who is allergic to the milder reacting proteins is more likely to be able to eat a certain food without real problems. This year his allergist opted to do peanut component testing just to see if there was any chance that he was allergic to the nicer proteins.

There was good news and bad news as far as Matthew’s blood work goes. First the bad. The peanut component test tests five different proteins: the first three are the bad ones that pretty much cause anaphylaxis and the last two are better proteins that don’t cause as much trouble. Not surprisingly, Matthew is highly allergic to the first three proteins and only very mildly allergic to the last two. So no to ever getting away from the peanut allergy.

Now the good. Matthew’s results for milk actually went down which is a first for him. His doctor was encouraged by that so she decided to do skin prick testing for both whole milk and casein (one of the proteins in milk). He still had a pretty bad reaction to whole milk but his reaction to casein was very mild. What that means is that he may be able to tolerate small amounts of milk in baked goods such as bread and crackers. He is still far too allergic to have plain milk or even milk in things like soup, but there is potential for a purchased hamburger bun or some such. So we are planning on doing a food challenge for milk in baked goods sometime in December. When I talked to Matthew about it he was completely on board with the whole idea. Being able to eat almonds after his food challenge last year has brought a bunch of new food into his diet and it has been a great thing for him. In fact, when we can find ones that don’t have peanut cross contamination warnings, Matthew really likes roasted and salted almonds. So fingers crossed for the milk test. We also have a food challenge to coconut milk in the future. I’m not sure when, but adding coconut milk to his diet would give us a substitute to whipped cream, something I have not been able to find.

And the ugly. There really isn’t an ugly except for the fact that we are dealing with the whole food allergy thing at all. And we’ve been doing it for so long that is has just become an everyday kind of thing for us. But it was a catchy title and I couldn’t resist. :-)

Other than that, things were pretty much the same. He is still highly allergic to eggs and peas and he also tested positive for allergies to cashews and new this year, pistachios. Every year we explore a few different nuts so cashew has been on his list for a while. This is the first time we have tested for pistachio so that one is new although I’m never surprised when a new nut gets added to the list.

So the allergy saga continues…it’s one of those stories that will be a lifelong one for Matthew.