Latest Allergy Appointment

Yesterday Tony and I both took Madelyn to see her allergist and gave him her chest xray from her hospital stay. He said many doctors use the term pneumonia. She didn't really have this according to him (and the pediatrician said this too). He asked us if anyone in the house had had bronchitis or laryngitis before she was sick and I told him Logan did. The doctor said an allergy patient will sound so much worse and feel so much worse when they catch this virus than someone without allergies and this is what happened to her. He said allergy children end up in the ER whereas someone like us can just stay home in the bed and recuperate. He tried to tell us how this all worked but my brain isn't equipped to remember all of that (which is why I wanted Tony to go with me too).

The end result of the visit was to change her medicines. She was placed on two nasal sprays and Pulmicort. As for the food allergies, since she has had these foods before he didn't feel they were a safety issue. He also understood how hard it would be to do an elimination diet with the ages of our children in the house. He felt if we go ahead now and give one back at a time over about a period of three days she should be okay. Later on we would hope she could tell us what foods make her feel sicker, but right now we can't tell if it's an environmental allergy making her sick vs a food allergy. Last night I let her have chicken strips and fries so I'm sure that was soy and milk involved there and she did blow out her diaper but we don't know if that was a coincidence or not. He also said doing a blood test at her age could be inconclusive. We're going to work on the environmental allergies right now as long as she's not swelling when eating something and having difficulty breathing from foods. I agree right now this is better for all of us since I know she's had these foods in the past. This will be much easier to try to figure out later on when she learns she can't steal her brother's food. In the fall she is also going to be put on a preventative medicine to hopefully keep what just happened from happening again. I don't think he told us the name of it but we'll find out at our August visit unless we have to go back sooner.