Thursday, December 2, 2010

We're Not Done Yet....

Beef, cashews, pistachios. Soy.

It occurred to me a few weeks ago that when Max had his allergy testing done, they tested for 10 things....and 3 were positive. So who's to say that had they tested for 10 more, maybe they would find something else that he was allergic to? So they did. And he was.

It just felt like the tip of the iceberg.

Of course Max's sleep had gotten so much better. Tremendously better. Then suddenly, he was up from midnight to 4 am. And we had to drive him around not once, but three times a night.

Of course Max's throwing up was better. Except for the last two weeks, when he threw up 3 times.

So when we met with the allergist and they recommended doing another skin test to re-check his allergy levels, I was torn between not wanting him to have to go through the pain of the procedure, and wanting to get to the bottom of what was bothering him.

20 little skin pricks later, and Max is running up and down the hallways of the doctor's office, with no shirt on, with 20 little dots on his back marking a constellation of concern. Sure enough, there were 3 fiery red welts that showed up.....noting an allergic reaction to beef, cashews and pistachios (tree nuts in general).

Then, at our follow-up appointment with the GI doctor (after a frantic call to the on-call doc over the Thanksgiving holiday), the powers that be decided that the most plausible new piece to our Max puzzle must be that he is also allergic to Soy.


Are you fucking kidding me?

Our latest working hypothesis is this: We took Max off of dairy, eggs, tomato. His little body said "Yay!!! Thank god someone finally figured this out! I feel soooo much better!". And then we started giving him soy. Lots of soy, to make up for the fact that he couldn't have dairy. Soy milk, soy yogurt, soy cheese, soy cream cheese. So Max's little body said "Shiiiiit guys! Now I feel like crap again! No sleeping for me!" And then he said "OK geniuses, while you're at it, not only am I allergic to soy, but to beef, cashew and pistachio". And he finished it off with a "TA!!!"....that's Max's version of "Ta-Da!" that he likes to say. OK, he didn't really say all of those things (except for "TA!"), but if he could've, he would've.

And that's where we're at. Apparently 50% of kids with a serious dairy allergy also have a serious soy allergy. You think dairy is in everything? SOY is in everything. Take a look at the wrapper of the cookie/cracker/lunchmeat you're eating right now. Does it say Soy Lecithin? This makes eating Vegan look like a cakewalk. We're so hardcore here now, those Vegans can KISS IT. Day 2 of the dawning of the soy free world. No change yet, but we'll see how it goes.

1 comment:

Bogart said...

Here is to years of eating...um...I dunno...whatever it is that he can eat. Sushi maybe?