Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Paediatric Allergist

Today was the day we've been waiting months for!
Today we took Benny to the paediatric allergist for allergy testing and dietary advice.
Benny's skin prick test showed a positive allergy to egg. They can not test for intolerance's, so based on his history we are told to assume he is intolerance to dairy, soy, wheat, nuts and fish.
At the moment we are allowed to feed him rice cereal, potato, Swede, green beans, pears, chicken and veal. We have been given a prescription for elecare, the hypoallergenic formula he's been on for the last 2 months. We were initially worried about taking him off breast milk and putting him on this formula, but they say we did the right thing, so we're happy.
We are planning to introduce all these foods slowly over the next month, and have him eating 3 meals a day within a month.
We have to go back in 3 months for more testing. At 6 months (now) false negatives are possible, but in 3 more months, testing is more reliable. In 3 months, we will also get Ethan allergy tested. Ethan will be following the same low allergy diet as Benny as we think he may have some food intolerance's too (based on his screaming issues last week). If his allergies show the same results in 3 months, we will slowly start giving him 'food challenges' by introducing different foods and seeing what happens!
We are now planning to live in a egg, fish, and nut free house. We also need to try as many tactics as possible to keep dust mites to a minimum as egg and dust mite allergies are linked.
We were told that our skin care techniques for Benny are good. We are to continue to be vigilant about moisturising his skin and keeping it clear and eczema free.
Benny is allowed to start swimming in outdoor pools as long as we wash him after and put a barrier cream on his skin. Unfortunately the local pool only has indoor lessons, so we will have to take him swimming in his Nana's backyard pool for now.
We are very happy with today as we finally have some answers, we finally have a prescription for elecare, we can now start him on more solids and we are told most kids outgrow their egg allergy by 3-7yrs old.

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