Friday, January 21, 2011

Allergy Follow-up

Back on Dec. 22 Caleb had a scary allergic reaction, and we never could pinpoint what caused it. He had a follow-up appointment at Walter Reed this afternoon. We saw a different doctor, as well as his resident (intern? I always get mixed up, LOL). They were both extremely nice, and they went and consulted with the doctor we saw the last time, who set up Caleb's milk challenge, as well, so we had many minds considering this problem! They all agreed it was pretty unlikely that it was the coffee.

In thinking over the situation the past few weeks, I came up with a few more differences that might have made a difference. For one, Caleb ate a slice of pepperoni pizza that was left-over for lunch that day. We had gotten it from a local restaurant the night before, but he had only eaten pineapple/ham pizza that night. Also, Caleb ate the last of a fruit salad with lunch. The salad only had fresh pineapple and grapes to begin with, and by the time Caleb ate it, there were only grapes left. But they would have been sitting in pineapple juice, and he has had issues with fresh pineapple before. Nothing like this reaction, of course, and only when he ate a lot of it on subsequent days, but still . . . he is a little sensitive to pineapple. Maybe, combined with the increased sensitivity from the dog and cats he was exposed to all day the day before, it was enough to trigger a big reaction?

So we have an appointment for Feb. 28, and we are supposed to bring in some fresh pineapple/grape fruit salad, a slice of pepperoni pizza from that same restaurant, and some of the Folger's coffee, like he was drinking that day. They will do some skin tests and have him eat the stuff and see if there is any reaction. I'm thinking there won't be, and we'll just have to be content to not know exactly what the problem is. But who knows--maybe something will show up.

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