Yesterday we attended our long awaited appointment with the pediatric allergist. It started out well. They had us headed to the back within minutes. Then, at least for poor Abby, it went downhill fast.
A little background: A few weeks ago we were lucky enough to get the girls' H1N1 shots at a free health department clinic. It was quite traumatic for Abby. Apparently, I did not have her secured as well as I thought and she slipped her arms out. She then proceeded to grab the needle, yank it out and drag it across her leg creating a scratch about 1.5 inches long. She was screaming and crying, "no,no,no,no". It was awful. And then, once we finally got the bleeding stopped and a band-aid applied, we then had to turn her over to actually give the shot in the other leg. Poor little thing. It was pretty awful.
Present day: It appears Abby remembered her recent trauma. As soon as the nurse made a move towards her - just to have her stand on a scale - she completely freaked out. Little Abby was crying, "no,no,no" sitting on the ground, and flailing about. She has never acted like that before. Never. I definitely think she remembered her last trip to the doctor. I did finally get her calmed down enough to stand briefly on the scale, but she still wasn't very happy.
Things were better after that. Not knowing how long the appointment would take, I had the good sense to bring along my new laptop. I connected to the kindly provided "guest" network and was able to access oodles of Elmo u-tube videos. They were a great diversion.
After talking to the Fellow and then the doctor, we had excellent news. They confirmed what I have recently begun to suspect: Natalie and Abby don't show any real signs of milk protein allergy. They also didn't think the bumps on their arms (which were better than I've ever seen them, of course) were allergy related. Just to be sure, they did the skin scratch test for milk protein and it tested negative for both girls. In fact, one of them had a greater reaction to the saline control than to the milk.
The doctors' thoughts were that IF they had a senstivity to something, it was most likely the lactose in milk. It would explain why they tolerate cheese and other forms of milk which have less lactose than straight milk. With this information, we are going to give lactose-free milk a try and see how that goes.
Personally, I'm beginning to doubt any of it and am beginning to feel that the Pedisure was the culprit all along. Other parents also have anecdotal evidence that suggests that Pedicure can just wreck havoc on sensitive systems. The difference once we switched them to the soy was incredible. But, it's hard to know what exactly they were reacting to.
In any case, I'm very happy the girls are not officially allergic to anything. I can begin to introduce different amounts of milk back to their diet and see what happens. I'm especially happy that they didn't think we needed to test for wheat or gluten or some of the ingredients you find in just about everything. That makes our life much easier.
I'm working on another post about their eating woes, so stay tuned:-)
ps - our little trip to the health department actually landed us on tv. A local channel was there to do a report and filmed us a little (pre-shot) and we made the 5, 5:30 and briefly the 11pm news. Yaya called to say she'd seen us on tv! I have it taped, of course, if anyone is interested in the girls' television debut.
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