Visiting The Allergist

I have mentioned this before but it bears repeating.  My daughter is NOT a fan of the doctor's office.  ANY doctor's office.  She panics, becomes antisocial and throws fits.  I have the teeth marks on my shoulder to prove it.

Again, I recruited my mother to join us if for nothing else but moral support for me.  She is always happy to help and I love her dearly for it.  After speaking to the doctor for  a few minutes and sharing our history, he suggested that we do a skin test for milk, egg yolk, soy, almond and peanut.  The reason for the soy was due to the fact that she is strictly on soy milk and it seems to upset her stomach when she drinks large quantities.  I was sure that because anytime I eat or drink a lot of soy I get an upset stomach that this would be negative but we wanted to rule it out.  The reason for the almond test was so that we could have an alternative to soy should we need it.  And because her exposure to egg yolk was limited, they wanted to test that one too.

Luckily they do not scrape the skin any more so after removing my daughter's shirt, they wrote numbers in ink and applied drops of the allergen to her skin and we waited.  She fussed but did not have a total melt down which was a relief.

Almost immediately, the area where they were testing for peanuts had a strong reaction.  Milk and egg yolk were growing as well but not at the rate that peanut was.  The nurse checked the areas every 5 minutes and after her second check decided to remove the peanut allergen as that was clearly positive.  Almond and soy were negative, leaving us with peanut milk and egg yolk to discuss.  Her results are below.  I have been trying desperately to figure out how to interpret them with not much luck yet.  I am able to however deduce that the larger the numbers the more severe the allergy.  It was an overwhelming experience so in the moment I didn't take the time to ask the doctor to explain the numbers.

Peanut:      Wheal = 7, Flare = 20
Milk:         Wheal = 4, Flare = 5
Egg Yolk:  Wheal = 4, Flare = 5

So clearly she is extremely allergic to peanuts, and mildly allergic to milk and egg yolks.