A Final Answer (of sorts)

This morning Sean and I had his follow up appointment at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. We were testing him further into the “family” of fruits that belong to Peaches, since he had a reaction back in January and then testing in March of this year.

Sean is severely allergic to (fresh & cooked) peaches, nectarines, apricots, and cherries (cherries were borderline and we'll be doing further testing at a later date). We thought it was associated to birch pollen, but it's not, it's a severe food allergy and a rare one in Canada to boot (an allergy that is seen mainly in Spain). Luckily there are other fruits out there, so avoiding pitted fruits won't be a big deal. At least now we know for sure what the deal is, and we can move on forward with assurance.

Since this test reacted more than the one we did in March, Sean’s arms were on fire when they reacted. The nurse who did his allergy test put cream on his arms once the test was over, and then gauze over the affected area. It was so bad, that they ended up having to administer an adult allergy medication (for the dosage) to help Sean feel better. He was such a good patient though, not too many tears were shed today, luckily.

I treated Sean to lunch today, but he wasn’t too happy about me taking any more pictures!

I’m glad that we now have some answers. We were told we could come back in 3 months, or 6 months even to get him further tested into the cherries business, or we could (if we didn’t mind avoiding them), come back in a year from now when he has his next follow up, to get the cherries tested then. We’re in no rush, and have to avoid the other pitted fruits, so what’s one more? The hospital isn’t exactly around the corner and the parking it the pits (pun intended), so we can wait for our follow up next year. As for the plums that we tested today (Black plums, as that is all I could find in the grocery store yesterday, not sure the difference) and it didn’t react, well, we don’t really eat plums in this house (none of us do), so we’ll probably avoid those too, as plums didn’t react today, but we need to test him by eating a small piece, wait an hour and if he doesn’t react, try another piece double in size from the original piece. But since none of us eat plums and we don’t really buy them, it’s not a big deal to figure out if he’s going to react against them or not. (And yes, you read that correctly, I had to do my own groceries for the test today, the hospital doesn’t supply the fruit. And for the cooked peaches, since I didn’t know that canned peaches are cooked (now I do), I picked up baby food, (purée), and that is what they used to test him on cooked peaches. (Sometimes people whom have a fresh peach allergy can eat cooked peaches, but this is NOT the case for Sean, he’s allergic to it in both ways, fresh & cooked, unfortunately).

Do you or your children have food allergies? How do you manage?