Those were my options.
I had to chose which one would be inflicted on my sweet girl.
Zoe has been getting a slight rash on her face after drinking milk. It was a lot worse. A few months ago, anywhere the milk would touch would turn fire red.
We stopped giving her milk to drink and didn't notice a reaction with any other milk products. I brought it up with her pediatrician and he referred us to an allergist.
The allergist said he wanted to do some tests. Here are my choices: Skin or blood?
The can either draw her blood, or poke her back about 15 times and put the allergens on her skin and wait for a reaction.
He poked my arm and it doesn't hurt, but either way she will be unhappy.
My brother has almost every environmental allergy there is. I watched him to numerous skin tests and scream and cry because it hurt and itched so bad. Did I really want to put my girl through that?
But would I rather have her pinned down and prodded with a needle until they find a vein?
I chose skin test, thinking it would be less invasive. The dr said he thought she would only react to one of the allergens if she even reacted at all.
What would you have chosen? or what did you chose if you have allergy stricken little ones?
3 comments:
Poor sweet thing! We did the skin test with Charleigh about 6 months ago and it wasn't too bad, but she was a lot older than Zoe.
golly, i have NO idea. Talk to Sara G.
I think Twain is allergic to something too, and am gonna do an elimination diet for now, but if it gets worse, I will be in the same boat as you are in.
I will be praying for you both as you figure this thing out.
Lots of Love.
O poor girl! With Bean we did the blood test. We found a lab our pediatrician recommended that specialized in pediatric blood draws. They found a vein quickly and we got the blood test over with in a matter of minutes.
There are drawbacks to both tests and both have fairly high rates of false positives. It is kind of frustrating. I think the skin test one has higher false positives though because if you are really, really allergic to something, it can spread outside the grid and make it seem like they are allergic to something else that they are not. And there is also the itchy hives factor.
But the blood test has problems too. Sometimes it will generate a false positive for anything in your system witting the last 24 hours. Or it isn't accurate to things they have never been exposed to before. So for example our daughter's test came back negative for any nut allergies, but she had never been exposed to nuts before so her antibodies wouldn't have reacted or known what to do with that anyway. However, she was pretty much living on crackers and dairy alone at the time and so there is a slight possibility that because her system was so overloaded with wheat and dairy that the test came back with a false positive for those things. I have since tried to reintroduce them though and she had some reactions.
So I don't know. I think one of the best ways to determine allergies is to go with your instincts (but that can be iffy too because sometimes we don't really want to believe they are allergic to something so "essential" to their diets) and eliminitation diets for your suspicions. Wheat, for example takes about 2 months to get out of your system, dairy two weeks and I haven't looked up others. So you completely eliminate that thing and carefully watch them. If things like rashes, dry skin, loose stools, eczema, runny noses, etc. go away then you have found your culprit. Or if those things don't go completely away, but you notice that they get much worse when you reintroduce the food, you also have your culprit.
Then comes the what do you do with it once you discover it which is a whole other story. Some people think by continuing to expose the allergen will help the child eventually grow out of and become immune to the thing they are allergic to. Others say complete avoidance can cure it or at least make the child less miserable from reactions. Others just don't feel like doing the huge work and extra expense for alternatives to continue to feed their kids.
Allergies suck! Sorry you are going thru this too. :(
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