And Then There Were 20

It's been much too long.

There are so many Blog-Abouts listed on my To Do list but first thing is first.

Yesterday was Boomba's Allergist Appointment. The appointment in which we would find out his test results!

We drove the almost 2 hours to get to town.
We walked around Wal-mart and the mall and finally it was time.
Appointment time!!!! We've been waiting 6 weeks for this!

We were called into the room sooner than later the Dr opened a folder to a sheet of unreadables as if we could understand what it said.

I searched the paper looking for words I knew among all of the symbols and numbers.

Casein of course jumped out first. What else? Beef?
What does this mean?

He sat back in his chair and said "You have a very allergic kid." He continued "See this number? It's the specific number as to how allergic Boomba is to these things- his allergy number."

The number meant nothing to me. Was is high for a 2 yr old?

"This number is higher then a very allergic adult's number would be."

Ah. That was simple. Wow.

As we asked questions we discovered more and more. There were 20 allergens he tested positive to in this screening.

They are each asigned a "count"-a specific number that explains how allergic Boomba is to it. Those "counts" as classified into a "class" to denote how severe the allergy is. Classes are as follows from least to highest: 0, 0/I, II, III, IIII, V. I don't know if it gets worse than a class V.

As predicted Boomba's worst allergy is to Casein. The question was how severe is it?
Class III is the answer. Class III allergies are very severe and it is something we cannot allow him to come in contact with. This isn't new information- but I'm glad to know it's not a IIII or a V.

Second is his Beef allergy which is described as a Class II.
Beef?
Beef.

We eat beef a few times a week and we asked if it was something we needed to wipe from our diet too. Dr explained it's not about treating numbers, it's about treating a sick child and depending on how sick Boomba is will determine if we are eating beef or not. Makes sense.

So that's 2 of 20....

There were 2 Class I's:
Kentucky Blue Grass
Gluten

Next are his Class 0/I:
Box Elder Maple
Cat hair
2 grass molds
Egg
Wheat
Dog

I'm soon going to be googling the difference between Wheat and Gluten especially because wheat was not listed as a plant but as a food.

Class 0 allergies were:
Johnson Grass
Common Short Ragweed
English Plantain
White Oak
American Elm
Mites
Chocolate
Corn
White Potato

This is all a lot to take in. They drew four vials of blood last time and so they confirmed they have enough blood left over to do additional testing without having to draw more. They will test for additional common environmental allergies along with 20 additional food allergies. We were responsible to picking out the 20 food allergies to test for.
WHOA!
Where do we start?
We looked at the paper and asked how to choose 20 out of the three columns looking back at us. The trick was to choose the things we most commonly eat and enjoy eating. Black pepper, chili powder, garlic, chicken, pork, bananas, apples, grapes, on and on.

That was the weirdest feeling- putting an "x" next to a food we wanted him test for. I wished I could check all of them.

After they get the results from this second test Dr will order an Oral Drop that will protect Boomba against the environmental allergens he's allergic to and thus make his food allergies more tolerable. His body wont constantly be fighting the environmental allergens and they wont be built up in his system, leaving more leeway for his food allergy exposure. I'm glad this is all happening during the winter months as we're inside most of the time anyway.

We ran through a lot of possibilities anticipating the results we would read. We did not anticipate learning of 19 additional allergies to be aware of. We will get the results of this next run in about a month.
Will they have a list of 20 more allergies for us?
Will the do ADDITIONAL testing?

Interesting fact:
Human milk does not contain casein like goat and cow's milk. That's why casein-allergic kids can be breastfed as long as the mother does not eat casein products.
Cool, huh?