A. can officially eat peanuts!!!!!
Yesterday was the peanut challenge and A. passed it with flying colours.
We were very close to cancelling again (he’d been feverish within 48 hours and his eczema seemed flared), but I “checked” in and got the message to do it, and we did and it was a complete non-issue.
In case you don’t know what’s involved with a peanut challenge: the person is fed 5 doses of peanuts, with 15-20 minutes between doses. The first time, the patient is asked to simply hold the peanut and then rub it on their lips.
- 0.5 g (1/2 a peanut)
- 1 g (1 peanut)
- 2 g (2 peanuts)
- 4 g (4 peanuts)
- 8 g (8 peantus)
So that’s 15.5 peanuts in a three hour period.
My husband was extremely nervous and anxious, but I was reassured by the message I got before the test that it would all be alright. And, I told myself that it was in as safe a place for anything wrong to happen, and if anything wrong did occur, at least we would definitely know that all of the precautions around peanuts were justified.
It also helped that my mom was visiting and present for the challenge. She helped to keep A. happy during the three hours, playing with him, and keeping my husband and I calm as well.
The peanuts didn’t even affect A.’s eczema or anything. The weird thing is that his skin actually looked better today than it did before the peanut challenge.
It’s a complete relief, and feels like a complete miracle. To put this in perspective, this was the boy who was reactive to everything (including things like rice). We are very thankful. Extremely thankful. Overjoyed. In awe and disbelief.
It completely changes our whole perspective and paradigm and I feel like A. will eventually outgrow his sensitivities to most things.
As I mentioned here, we’re slowly starting to introduce other foods at home, but it’s been a very slow process because his skin has still been pretty reactive. I think since June, we’ve reintroduced: rice (but not rice milk yet), broccoli and raspberries.
As I mentioned before, A. has had three anaphylatic reactions in the past. One was to stevia (a natural sweetener), and the other two times, it wasn’t obvious to what he reacted to. The more I think about it, I think one time was to him chewing on a bookmark (he literally ate half a bookmark), and the other time was to hand sanitizer (we put it on his hands, and he likely had his hands in his mouth sometime after that). So, I think that the reactions were probably to chemical and not foods, per say. This makes us feel a lot safer introducing new foods, and that the anaphylatic reactions were likely just weird “flukes”.
Now that the peanut challenge is over, we’re encouraged to feed him peanuts once a week, and not over do it. We bought some organic peanut butter and my husband enjoyed his first peanut butter and banana sandwich in years. Sometime over the weekend, we’ll give A. a bit of peanut butter on his glutenfree, eggfree, milkfree bread and see how he does!
