Amanda's Allergist Visit Update

On Thursday January 10th, Steve, (a very very excited) Mandie and I headed up to LaCrosse for Mandie's twice a year visit with Dr. Mary Morris of Allergy Associates of La Crosse.  Her visit was at 8:40am on Friday.  It was a very good visit this time!!!   The only food Mandie added is the spice rosemary, which we've observed and noted reactions at home in the few months prior to the visit.  There is no testing for it, but Dr. Mary said we know how to test and eliminate, so she added rosemary to Mandie's list.

 Mandie has lost her bloated malnutrition belly, grown just over an inch, and lost over a pound since July (though we weighed her before she went off her Periactin on Dec. 21st and she was down a whole 5 lbs).  We asked about the recent bouts of croupy sounding cough. Dr. Mary said albuterol is a perfect treatment for her episodes of Reactive Airway Disease, but if Mandie uses it more than 2-3 times in 24 hours for more than a week we need to call Dr. Mary about a controller med. She is thrilled with how school is going and what all they are doing for Mandie. She admitted to being very very nervous about it at first. 

Mandie is being treated with Sublingual Immunotherapy Treatment (SLIT) for her environmental allergies as well as milk, soy, and peanut. Dr. Mary wanted to test corn this visit, so Mandie was given  an oral tolerance test with corn drops, which she immediately failed with warm red cheeks & full body itch starting less than 60 seconds after drops were administered.

 Transdermal testing for her worst three molds showed marked improvement, so her dose will be increased. What a blessing!!! Dr. Mary is doing the usual blood work for nutrition levels, IgE, and IgG numbers on her whole list. We will get results in a couple of weeks along with the new drops. 

 Dr. Mary agreed that twice daily Periactin is now an essential year round, as it is benefiting her so very much overall, and she feels it is the safest on the market for Mandie. She also agreed that the appetite stimulation is a good thing for her. 

 Dr. Mary is currently most concerned about corn, coconut, and sunflower being so contact reactive, and will be checking her numbers of both IgE & IgG to see what those show. She was going to do the oral drop challenge with coconut and sunflower also, but when the corn failed so quickly she decided not to. The lab is going to make up a food drop solution containing corn when the test results come back, and wants to work on sunflower and coconut soon also. The entire goal of this right now is to get Mandie so that she won't have a life threatening reaction from mere skin contact, and will hopefully be able to tolerate using soaps, etc w/coconut, and small derivatives of corn like citric acid (which she currently reacts to as badly as full on corn).

Mandie is up to 22 foods with the addition of the rosemary. Her entire list is: 

reactive airway disease; celiac; ANAPHYLACTIC to dairy, shellfish, mollusks, wheat, sunflower, safflower, palm, coconut, almond, chamomile (all contact/ingestion/airborne); allergic to soy, peanut, corn, honey, oat, mustard, chocolate, olive, bananas, rosemary,  lanolin, wool, lidocaine, latex (contact and airborne), adhesives, grass, mold, dust mites, ragweed,  dandelions, grain dust,  Midwest trees; malignant hyperthermia susceptible; outgrew strawberry, cats, dogs, cottonwood trees

After testing was done we headed to Tomah to visit with some cousins and see the new baby.  Mandie had a blast with 5 month old Aubrea!

After our visit we headed back to the hotel with plans to eat dinner and swim, but after getting her periactin and benadryl to control the itching from her transdermal testing and the chemicals in the doctors' office, Mandie fell asleep in the van and had to be carried up to our room, where she slept deeply for her usual 15 hours post testing. 

On the way home the next day she ate like the caterpillar in Eric Carle's "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", watched movies, and napped a bit.