My Little Allergy Man

As many know, we found out last summer that Walt is highly allergic to peanuts. While the incident that gave us the indication was super scary, I have to say it's been a relatively easy thing to handle. Luckily food allergies seem to be more prominent (maybe we are just more educated??) so everyone around us has been very cognizant and understanding (or dealing with allergies of their own!)

After Walt's initial exposure, we did take him to my allergist just to confirm (not that we needed a clinical confirmation), but we also wanted to make sure we were prepared. We now have an EpiPen that I hope to God we never have to use. I just dispensed our expired one into an apple (while you get a "trainer" pen with the real deal, the doctor suggested practicing with the real one b/c it actually feels different. He was right! It's kind of violent).

We took Walt to Dr. Moore this week to get re-tested. Many kids can grow out of the allergy by the time they are five years old, but this is really the only way to tell, without causing anaphylaxis.  Since we practice "total avoidance", we really had no idea if the allergy was still present. Welp, it is. :) You're either allergic or you're not, but they do grade the reaction. Walt is a 3, which is supposedly pretty sensitive.

Ouch! (P for Peanut and a control and positive test)

This was about 5 minutes into the 15 minute test and the P and + are welted up nicely
Last week at school there was a little incident where Walt lost a battle to some fire ants.  He got about a dozen bites distributed on his ankles.  He didn't have a scary reaction, but the bites definitely got super swollen. We gave him Benadryl just in case.

Ant bait
Through all of this, Walt is such a champ. He didn't even flinch at the ant bites and got over the peanut test pretty quickly (with the help of some ice cream).  Luckily, I was allergic to everything known to man as a kid and had bad asthma to boot. So, I have some empathy for this guy. I can tell he's a lot tougher than I am, though :)