Tuesday, July 27, 2010

More allergy woes

So after processing all this allergy info for the past few days, I realized that the peanut allergy is not the one that's going to be a problem.  It's milk, especially in combination with soy.  We had a small incident this weekend that made me realize that we should probably pay more attention to this milk allergy.  We were staying at a house with dogs, which apparently Dash is also allergic to, and were keeping the allergy pretty well controlled with Zyrtec.  The second day we were there we gave D a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, and shortly after his eyes started getting itchy and watery and his nose was running, then he threw up his sandwich.  After that he was fine!  It seems to me that throwing up was his body's way of getting rid of this allergen, which normally wouldn't bother him but in a situation where his immune system was already compromised from dealing with dog dander it was just a bit too much for him to handle!  I talked to Dr. Dave about it and he agreed, saying that it's probably a good idea to eliminate dairy from his diet for a while.  Currently we're "limiting" dairy until we can figure out a menu for D.  Dashiell LOVES milk and cheese.  He drinks about 24 oz of milk a day!  How do we keep him hydrated?  He does drink water but usually only about 8 oz a day.  I assume he'll start to drink more, but only drinking water seems awfully boring.  And cheese?  What is a life without cheese??  Hardly worth living!  Okay I'm over-reacting but still, I feel bad for my dairy-junkie son, having to go through cheese withdrawal.  What's really throwing me for a loop is the fact that we can't replace his dairy addiction with soy products.  Most of the fake cheese recipes call for soy as a substitute.  We can't give him soy milk to drink instead of milk.  I'm just glad he doesn't care much for ice cream--Rice Dream just isn't the same as Ben and Jerry's.

Rick thinks I'm being overly cautious, and that Dr. Dave was just telling me what I wanted to hear when he said to eliminate dairy.  That D's been fine with dairy so far, and the allergy is slight.  He probably threw up the grilled cheese because he was overtired and upset.  I'm not buying it.  As someone with asthma, I can tell you that every time I get a cold, I get short of breath the day before.  My asthma is normally very well controlled, but when my immune system starts to get stressed, I have a small attack.  It's the same thing with allergies!  You might be fine with the little allergies you have until you get hit with too many at once and your immune system starts fighting them all fiercely.  Has anyone ever had an anaphylactic response to dairy?  I don't know, but I also don't want to find out.  My plan is to at the very least try to eliminate the easy dairy products--milk, cheese, yogurt, etc, until we can meet with the allergist.  The stuff that's processed in food I'm not going to worry too much about yet, unless milk is one of the first ingredients.  I made an appointment with a different allergist who could get us in sooner--in 2 weeks instead of 3 months--so we should have more answers and information soon.  I already have a huge list of questions, and I'm sure that list will grow!

I never thought that a peanut allergy would actually be one of the easier allergies to deal with!

Despite all these allergy woes we've actually had a pretty fun couple of weeks.  I'll update on fun stuff later, complete with pictures.

2 comments:

AllergyMentor said...

The short answer is yes, you can have an anaphylactic reaction to dairy. My daughter's allergy has gotten more severe as she gets older. The good news is that coconut milk ice cream, yogurt, and milk are wonderful! Try So Delicious brand in the dairy case, even my husband likes it!

Suzi said...

Thanks allergy mama! We're familiar with So Delicious yogurt (raspberry is so yummy!) but haven't tried any of their other products. I'll check them out!
Glad you found my blog--I'm now following yours now and try some of the tasty recipes! Thank for the tips!