I never wanted to have a child with food allergies for the following reasons:
1) It's Scary- they could die
2)It's inconvenient- you've got to know what's in your food and always be on the look out
3)It's life changing- your in it for the long haul
Well here's the story of our life changing event...
We went to dinner, and shared food like we always do. When we were on the way home Ari commented that his face felt funny and sure enough his lips and cheeks were swollen, there were red bumps on his cheeks. We quickly stopped at the store for some Benadryl. At this point he was having stomach cramping. And with in the hour he was vomiting and having trouble swallowing. Needless to say we kept a close watch on him and wouldn't let him go to sleep until late so we could be sure his breathing was OK and he wasn't going to loose consciousness. YIKES!!!
He had hamburgers for dinner, pretty standard, we didn't think that could be the problem, but dad had had some yummy shrimp. I took him to the doctor first thing Monday morning and got a referral for and allergy test. We had that today and confirmed that he does indeed have a shellfish allergy. No more cheese ball at Grandma's and no Lobster to celebrate a special event! (his pocket book will thank him later).
At first I thought, well that's better than the more common food allergies and it is... but seafood can sneak into many things and my list of BEWARE keeps growing. And being a worrier I have already started asking... well what about his mission, better not be Louisiana and numerous other wonderful places!
Now we have an EpiPen and hope to never use it.
The Allergist said that there have not been many studies done on shellfish allergies in children(because it is not that common), so we do not know if this is something that he could out grow or if it will increase in severity. At this point we monitor what he eats and then go back for another skin test in a year.
We also found out that he has many, many seasonal allergies(by far the worst of the bunch). I guess our gene quality gets worse with each child.(Dave blames it all on Todd)
