#nailedit: Allergist Edition

First things first: I loved Freddie's allergist, Dr. McCann, every bit as much as I love Dr. O'Donnell, the boys' pediatrician. He immediately set me at ease by jumping up on the exam table and having a really relaxed conversation with Jeremy and me. I appreciated that so much. It was a gigantic answer to prayer.

Secondly, I was right: all of the things I THOUGHT Freddie is allergic to (pollen, dog fur, tree nuts), he is now confirmed to be allergic to.

The test itself was pretty much a nightmare. It doesn't hurt - 37 pen (not a typo) pricks on his back -  but you'd never have known that from Freddie's screams. I think it was just fear: he was laying on his stomach, me holding his arms and Jeremy his legs, while a stranger wrote on his back and then poked it with things that made him really itchy.

But in spite of the seemingly benign nature of the test, Freddie screamed, and he screamed, and he screamed. He kept saying, "I wanna go back to school! I wanna go back to school!" And I kept thinking, "Thank GOD it isn't JONES we're having tested." Lawd, have mercy. For as poorly as Freddie handled it, I can only imagine Jones would have been exponentially worse. That may be unfair of me to say, but come on. We all know it's true.

At any rate, Freddie calmed down pretty quickly after the test, but we had to keep him from touching the poke sites for 15 minutes, which required all hands on deck and made me really grateful that Jeremy was there for the first 90 minutes of the two-hour visit.

There were no real surprises out of the appointment: he's allergic to Hickory / Pecan and Cottonwood tree pollen, as well as Dock / Sorrel Mix weed pollen (none of that means anything to me - but I'm writing it down, in case Freddie ever needs to know the specifics and I've lost these papers that hold his results) and Dog Fur (Dr. McCann said a pet rock is probably our best bet. This makes me sad for my little dog lover).

He's also SEVERELY allergic to Cashews, Hazelnuts, and Walnuts (that's the one he reacted most strongly to in the test, which explains why that's the nut that made him throw up), but of the 7 tree nuts he was tested for, he's allergic to 4 of them (almonds is the fourth that he's allergic to; it didn't register as severe, though).

Our course of treatment is simple - NO TREE NUTS. Also, Epi-Pen. Always. A REALLY bright spot of the occasion was Dr. McCann's hooking us up with a pharmacy in New Jersey that provides two sets of injectors per year FOR FREE. Given that we spent $298 out of pocket for one set (and that was after applying Blue Cross's rate - they don't cover the pens, but they DO get a discount on them - AND a $300 manufacturer's coupon), freebies from the manufacturer was a significant cause for grateful celebration.

Something else to be grateful for is the fact that Dr. McCann is about to start offering a brand new oral immunotherapy for tree nuts. They've had success doing it for peanuts, and now they're branching out (har!) to include tree nuts.

Oral immunotherapy is where they give the patient a microscopic dose of the allergen in increasing amounts for a couple of weeks. Within months, you've built up a resistance to the allergen and trained your body that it's not foreign at all, so you don't need to attack it.

The downside, Dr. McCann said, is that you have to eat a small amount of the allergen pretty much every day for the rest of your life (for example, with peanuts, it's about 8 nuts) to be sure you don't lose your resistance to it. The BRIGHT side, however, is that your mother doesn't have to worry every second of your life that you've unwittingly bitten into something made with a tree nut protein. I say "unwittingly," because there is NO WAY IN THE WORLD that Freddie Pressley is going to purposely eat any nut that isn't a peanut: "I might throw up" is his very quick response, remembering all too well what went down last week.

And that part about "worrying every second of your life" isn't entirely true. In fact, it's flat out false. I've actually been SHOCKINGLY at peace, which is TRULY an act of God's grace (and something ELSE to be grateful for). He's reminded me that He's protected Freddie this far in his life, and He is a WAY more capable Caregiver than I am. The doctor said for us to just keep living our lives only to do it without letting Freck eat tree nuts, and that's what we intend to do.

We also intend to try the oral immunotherapy, assuming it becomes available as Dr. McCann expects that it will. It seems like a no-brainer at this point. Again, it's not that Freddie craves cashews - or will ever again want to eat a walnut - but there's a tremendous peace of mind that'd come, I imagine, with removing as much risk as we can - particularly as he becomes more independent with school, friendships, and other activities.

So that's where we are - grateful for a great doctor, grateful for the knowledge that will empower us to keep Freddie as safe as we can, and grateful to the God Who, as the catechism goes, "made him and takes care of him."