Achoo!

Booked myself into the allergy clinic to look into getting desensitised to dust and maybe one of my other allergies (pollen or mould), as quite frankly, I'm getting sick of the asthma/eczema/hayfever that they cause me. Especially when I visit family and stay in dust-ridden spare beds, but it affects me almost on a daily basis. I also wanted to talk about getting E-chan tested soon, just in case he has some allergies.

So there we were in the waiting room, which I must say has the coolest toys ever, and a Paediatrician there, who had a spare appointment, took one look at E-chan and said "I want to see him!" (he has a rash around his mouth). So we changed course a bit, and talked about us both. After my appointment, E-chan got tested for allergies. At his age, environmental allergens are only just developing as their bodies get exposed to them increasingly, but food allergies are possible. Given both his dad and mum has allergies, he had a 50-80% chance of having allergies, poor sod. And he does.

To eggwhite (no suprise there, he's had some exposure, and I ate it while breastfeeding), cashews (I gulped a lot in the middle of the night when ravenous whilst breastfeeding), so again, no suprise but the shock allergy was: SESAME!!!

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

This means he will have to be raised without hommous (one of my 6 food groups) and tahini!! I guess I must have wolfed down more sesame than I realised whilst breastfeeding.

Next week, I'll ask about the likelihood that he'll grow out of these with time. The good news it that he isn't allergic to fish, milk, or soy, and due to not being fed nuts, he has no other nut allergies. And the other good news is that we know he's had egg and hommous recently, and there was no extreme reaction (e.g. anaphylaxis). But avoiding them will help keep him clear of eczema. Along with avoiding tomato, broccoli, mushroom, avocado and other things that bother me, as it's likely he has the same intolerance to salicylates.

But for me, there will be 15 weeks or so of weekly allergen injections, followed by monthly maintenance doses for a year or so. Probably followed by allergy-free bliss. It worked for my Dad, and countless others. Oooh, and Seagreen - they reckon my so-called cat & dog allergy is probably just my dust allergy - they told me to think of cats in particular, being indoor creatures, as "big dustballs"!! (NB This says nothing of the past cleanliness of your house - I've reacted to every cat I've been near since I was about 3).