Last Sunday morning started out "normal" enough. We decided on pancakes for breakfast, so I got out everything necessary. I made the gluten free one first to avoid any cross contamination. Then I started on the gluten filled mix. I made a few and J got the kids started eating. I grabbed a gluten one to munch on while flipping the ones cooking. A few minutes later I began to wonder when I had burned my tongue.
As we ate our pancakes, I began to wonder why I hadn't noticed that I had burned the roof of my mouth. I didn't think much of it, but mentioned it to J. A little while later I realized that my tongue was swollen. And this was about the time J was preparing to leave for the week.
I took some Benedryl, but didn't have much in the house - yeah, bad planning on my part. Later that evening I could barely talk, but didn't have any problems other than my mouth. So I took Benedry and just pushed through. Oh, it was rough.
A swollen tongue makes it hard to talk, and when you are home alone 24 hours a day with four kids ages six and under.....you have to talk. The sides of my tongue were extremely raw from my teeth and my speech was slow and methodical.
I called my allergy doc first thing Monday morning and luckily was able to get an appointment for that Thursday. And by Wednesday morning, my tongue was more or less back to normal.
My appointment went fairly well, with the exception that it was my second appointment of the day (the first was with a pulmonologist to try to extinguish this chronic cough) and it was naptime. The nurses tried to give my kids crackers....and had to decline those.
The nurse practitioner went over my files (as both docs were on vacation....) and she was confused. We went over the pancake mix ingredients and my allergy list. I believed my only allergy (from my testing last fall) was to wheat. However, that is not what my file said!! It said peanuts!!! And there was NO peanuts in the mix....
Wow!! That put me into a state of shock! I thought I had "outgrown" my peanut allergy, as I had with the corn, soy, and tomato allergies from my childhood. I thought I had a minor wheat allergy. (I went and checked my files at home, and peanut was correct!) The only thing the nurse could think of was that my allergies overloaded and I reacted. She said it wouldn't have mattered what I ate.
So now I have to keep a food diary to see if I react to anything again. I haven't started it yet, but have eaten both wheat and peanut butter this week, without reacting. I was prescribed an epi-pen, but have yet to pick it up, as my insurance has to "approve" it, and also Walgreens seems to have problems getting one! I will try again tomorrow...
This reminds me of the newest Star Trek movie - the one of James Kirk's beginning. In it, he gets a vaccine to make him ill, so he can get on board the ship when a crisis breaks out. He had been accused of cheating and was supposed to be left at the school. He reacts to the vaccine and starts to have problems talking. He says "numb tongue? I have numb tongue?" Yeah, numb tongue.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Little R turns ONE and his allergy story
First off, I want to apologise for being MIA lately. It's been kinda crazy around here. My hubby got a new job and we have our house on the market so we can move. Keeping a house show-worthy at all times is a full time job with four kids under seven.
Anyway, our youngest, R, had a birthday last month and it is amazing how fast the time has gone. He is quite the character and has perfected that ear-splitting high pitched shreek that NO child should be able to do!! He is on the verge of walking alone and loves giving kisses! BUT, he is just now starting to eat "table" food. All of my other kids were off baby food way before this age.....but that was before food allergies invaded our lives.
R was born at 39 weeks after a fairly uneventful pregnancy - nothing out of the ordinary for me, just the usual early contractions, and my blood pressure going up and down. R was 8 pounds 7 ounces, a good size baby and he announced his displeasure loudly. The nurses had a hard time with the new electronic records system that the hospital had just switched to eight days previously. It was this same system that prevented records from being lost thirteen days later when the massive EF-5 tornado destroyed the hospital. R and I were released after 24 hours and we began our new normal as a family of six.
R lost the normal weight in the first days, but didn't gain it back like the others. Within a few days he was a skinny little boy, but his pediatrician wasn't concerned. He struggled with nursing, and was deemed a "lazy" nurser by his doc. He was almost one month old before he was back to his birth weight. After two months of fighting nursing, we admitted defeat and put him on formula. And he did better. 24 ounces per day - never any more, never any less. R had the same swallowing difficulties as our other kids, so we thickened all of his bottles. Doc said we could use rice, but I had heard it increased the risk of food allergies, so we went with the commercial thickener that we had used previously.
Just shy of four months, I started weaning R off the thickener and noticed a few things immediately. His reflux (he was on prescription Prevacid) got a little better, and his stools were less stinky and had more form. His stools had always been very rank and very loose, but once again, his doc wasn't concerned. This was about the time that C's allergy tests were being processed. So it got us wondering.....what was it about the thickener...
Cornstarch. Pure cornstarch. I talked with his doc and she agreed that switching formulas would be a good idea - IF we could find one without corn. And we did. We found ONE. Similac Alimentum, but ONLY the Ready to Use liquid. And it was almost $10 for 32 ounces, so essentially $10 per day. We made the switch and R became a totally different child! We were able to take him of his reflux meds and his stools essentially lost all smell!!
And he started gaining weight! He was 85th percentile at birth, 25th at one month, and up to 50th by six months. And he has stayed fairly consistent at 50th since then.
But avoiding corn terrified me!! Avoiding wheat for C was so much easier since wheat has to be labeled, but corn.....is in everything! And under 100 different names!! So I stuck with the easier route - pureed food, introducing one food per week, just to make sure there were no other foods we needed to avoid. Any time I tried to introduce a table food, I knew immediately if there was any corn in it, as he would reflux the rest of the day. So, I just avoided table foods, knowing that inevitably I would have to introduce finger foods.
And the finger foods have been difficult. So many of the first foods had corn, especially those that are gluten free. So I found myself buying glutenful items just for R, while trying to keep them away from C, while keeping the gluten free stuff away from R. Confused?? Yeah, so was I.
So now I am trying to introduce those finger foods. His baby food supply ran out and I decided I was NOT going to buy any more. This week has been his first full week without a jar. He has really enjoyed it, but it still terrifies me. I know he is not anaphylactic, but I know all too well that food allergies can go from nothing to horrible very quickly. (I reacted to pancakes this week - ones that I had eaten many times before - and my tongue swelled up, but that is another story.)
As of tonight, R really likes yogurt and rice krispies (the only gluten free corn free cereal I have found as of yet) and strawberries (this was our trial week for them). Chicken and cheese are okay, but he won't eat much of them. He refuses crackers but loves pancakes, especially ones with chocolate chips.
All in all, we have come a long way since discovering his corn allergy, but we still have a long way to go. Our doc is optimistic that he will outgrow this soon, but the blessing of this is that we are eating healthier.
Anyway, our youngest, R, had a birthday last month and it is amazing how fast the time has gone. He is quite the character and has perfected that ear-splitting high pitched shreek that NO child should be able to do!! He is on the verge of walking alone and loves giving kisses! BUT, he is just now starting to eat "table" food. All of my other kids were off baby food way before this age.....but that was before food allergies invaded our lives.
R was born at 39 weeks after a fairly uneventful pregnancy - nothing out of the ordinary for me, just the usual early contractions, and my blood pressure going up and down. R was 8 pounds 7 ounces, a good size baby and he announced his displeasure loudly. The nurses had a hard time with the new electronic records system that the hospital had just switched to eight days previously. It was this same system that prevented records from being lost thirteen days later when the massive EF-5 tornado destroyed the hospital. R and I were released after 24 hours and we began our new normal as a family of six.
R lost the normal weight in the first days, but didn't gain it back like the others. Within a few days he was a skinny little boy, but his pediatrician wasn't concerned. He struggled with nursing, and was deemed a "lazy" nurser by his doc. He was almost one month old before he was back to his birth weight. After two months of fighting nursing, we admitted defeat and put him on formula. And he did better. 24 ounces per day - never any more, never any less. R had the same swallowing difficulties as our other kids, so we thickened all of his bottles. Doc said we could use rice, but I had heard it increased the risk of food allergies, so we went with the commercial thickener that we had used previously.
Just shy of four months, I started weaning R off the thickener and noticed a few things immediately. His reflux (he was on prescription Prevacid) got a little better, and his stools were less stinky and had more form. His stools had always been very rank and very loose, but once again, his doc wasn't concerned. This was about the time that C's allergy tests were being processed. So it got us wondering.....what was it about the thickener...
Cornstarch. Pure cornstarch. I talked with his doc and she agreed that switching formulas would be a good idea - IF we could find one without corn. And we did. We found ONE. Similac Alimentum, but ONLY the Ready to Use liquid. And it was almost $10 for 32 ounces, so essentially $10 per day. We made the switch and R became a totally different child! We were able to take him of his reflux meds and his stools essentially lost all smell!!
And he started gaining weight! He was 85th percentile at birth, 25th at one month, and up to 50th by six months. And he has stayed fairly consistent at 50th since then.
But avoiding corn terrified me!! Avoiding wheat for C was so much easier since wheat has to be labeled, but corn.....is in everything! And under 100 different names!! So I stuck with the easier route - pureed food, introducing one food per week, just to make sure there were no other foods we needed to avoid. Any time I tried to introduce a table food, I knew immediately if there was any corn in it, as he would reflux the rest of the day. So, I just avoided table foods, knowing that inevitably I would have to introduce finger foods.
And the finger foods have been difficult. So many of the first foods had corn, especially those that are gluten free. So I found myself buying glutenful items just for R, while trying to keep them away from C, while keeping the gluten free stuff away from R. Confused?? Yeah, so was I.
So now I am trying to introduce those finger foods. His baby food supply ran out and I decided I was NOT going to buy any more. This week has been his first full week without a jar. He has really enjoyed it, but it still terrifies me. I know he is not anaphylactic, but I know all too well that food allergies can go from nothing to horrible very quickly. (I reacted to pancakes this week - ones that I had eaten many times before - and my tongue swelled up, but that is another story.)
As of tonight, R really likes yogurt and rice krispies (the only gluten free corn free cereal I have found as of yet) and strawberries (this was our trial week for them). Chicken and cheese are okay, but he won't eat much of them. He refuses crackers but loves pancakes, especially ones with chocolate chips.
All in all, we have come a long way since discovering his corn allergy, but we still have a long way to go. Our doc is optimistic that he will outgrow this soon, but the blessing of this is that we are eating healthier.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Three dry mornings! and food allergies.
Three dry mornings and without using pullups! This is a HUGE milestone for my soon to be 5 years old son C. Potty training for him was NOT easy. We would have him totally trained and then he would totally relapse and wet himself every time, and this happened several times. We tried everything we could think of, even using homeopathic bedwetting drops last summer.
I began reading a book about ADHD (he was diagnosed by a pediatric neuropsychologist January 2010 - right before he turned 4) and it discussed several things I hadn't though of, including hidden food allergies. We had been very careful with his foods as an infant, and he had never reacted to anything. As a toddler he reacted once to peanuts (SCARY) and several times to cinnamon. But in three different allergy tests, he was negative for anything. But the food allergies and ADHD had me wondering - was it a food dye or something in everything he ate? We had no clue and no idea where to start. Last summer, just a few weeks after the tornado destroyed the hospital that we use, C broke out in hives. I wasn't initally too concerned - he always breaks out in hives when we stop/switch his allergy meds. We were switching him
so that we as a family could all be on the same thing - only ONE to buy. But these hives were different.
They kept spreading.
Eventually it got to the point that I got really worried. We had done the benedryl and bathed him in oatmeal. And that didn't help. So we went to the hospital.....the TENT hospital, as it was called. The ER was ten or so beds with barely any privacy.
C is a super skinny kiddo and he has my veins, meaning drawing blood or hitting a vein for IV's is difficult. Mix with that an intelligent 4 year old who was hurting (his feet were so swollen by that time that he wouldn't stand), no soundproofing, and it was past bedtime. They had to stick him more than once, and I can still remember him screaming, "Don't poke me!!" over and over at the top of his lungs. Still hard to remember that!! Eventually they got all the meds in him and we were able to go home, after I bought him an Ironhide transformer.
He looked much better the next morning, but the hives started coming back later in the day. So after a trip to his pediatrician's new office we had an appointment to see an allergist. We saw that allergist at his temporary office at Memorial Hall and got C's blood drawn before we left the building. Then we w..a..i..t..e..d.... The doc had to wait until he had his new office before the blood could be tested. Then we found out his machine had sustained more damage than initially thought, so we waited some more.
We found out C has minor allergies to wheat and egg whites, and he reacted to several other foods (chicken, chocolate, beef, and a few others) but they were all under the "allergy" limit.
So, MAJOR diet change ensued. No more wheat or egg whites. Which meant no more flour, which is used in EVERYTHING and can be found in trace amounts in many foods. C has now been wheat and egg white free for about three months and wow have things changed!! He no longer has accidents (except for a very occasional one from playing too hard) and his ADHD symptoms have greatly decreased!! We do know when he gets wheat because he will become more defiant and have more tantrums, but I am determined to keep the wheat away (see my 2012 "resolution"). Bedwetting hasn't happened in over a month, and we officially stopped wearing pullups as a backup. It is amazing what food allergies can do to our bodies (and NOT in a good way)!!
Since all this happened with C, I got my allergies retested. I am no longer sensitive to soy, corn, or tomato (yay), but have a slight allergy to wheat. My 6 year old daughter K is allergic to egg whites only, when she was retested. Our allergist told us allergy tests can be unreliable in kids under 4 years, which is why we got so many negative tests with C. My two year old L can't have pears or pineapple, which we discovered through elimination diets. He gets nasty diaper rashes from them. And our 8 month old R can't have corn. There is only ONE formula that is guaranteed to be corn-free, and it's $10 per day....
All that being said, there's power in knowing what makes us not feel well and I would encourage others to not give up finding out the root cause of ailments. We could have medicated C for his ADHD, but it wouldn't have fixed anything. We know the cause and he is improving without any meds - none for ADHD and none for his allergies!
Oh, I want to welcome my FIRST follower too!! Thanks for coming by my humble blog!
I began reading a book about ADHD (he was diagnosed by a pediatric neuropsychologist January 2010 - right before he turned 4) and it discussed several things I hadn't though of, including hidden food allergies. We had been very careful with his foods as an infant, and he had never reacted to anything. As a toddler he reacted once to peanuts (SCARY) and several times to cinnamon. But in three different allergy tests, he was negative for anything. But the food allergies and ADHD had me wondering - was it a food dye or something in everything he ate? We had no clue and no idea where to start. Last summer, just a few weeks after the tornado destroyed the hospital that we use, C broke out in hives. I wasn't initally too concerned - he always breaks out in hives when we stop/switch his allergy meds. We were switching him
so that we as a family could all be on the same thing - only ONE to buy. But these hives were different.
They kept spreading.
Eventually it got to the point that I got really worried. We had done the benedryl and bathed him in oatmeal. And that didn't help. So we went to the hospital.....the TENT hospital, as it was called. The ER was ten or so beds with barely any privacy.
C is a super skinny kiddo and he has my veins, meaning drawing blood or hitting a vein for IV's is difficult. Mix with that an intelligent 4 year old who was hurting (his feet were so swollen by that time that he wouldn't stand), no soundproofing, and it was past bedtime. They had to stick him more than once, and I can still remember him screaming, "Don't poke me!!" over and over at the top of his lungs. Still hard to remember that!! Eventually they got all the meds in him and we were able to go home, after I bought him an Ironhide transformer.
He looked much better the next morning, but the hives started coming back later in the day. So after a trip to his pediatrician's new office we had an appointment to see an allergist. We saw that allergist at his temporary office at Memorial Hall and got C's blood drawn before we left the building. Then we w..a..i..t..e..d.... The doc had to wait until he had his new office before the blood could be tested. Then we found out his machine had sustained more damage than initially thought, so we waited some more.
We found out C has minor allergies to wheat and egg whites, and he reacted to several other foods (chicken, chocolate, beef, and a few others) but they were all under the "allergy" limit.
So, MAJOR diet change ensued. No more wheat or egg whites. Which meant no more flour, which is used in EVERYTHING and can be found in trace amounts in many foods. C has now been wheat and egg white free for about three months and wow have things changed!! He no longer has accidents (except for a very occasional one from playing too hard) and his ADHD symptoms have greatly decreased!! We do know when he gets wheat because he will become more defiant and have more tantrums, but I am determined to keep the wheat away (see my 2012 "resolution"). Bedwetting hasn't happened in over a month, and we officially stopped wearing pullups as a backup. It is amazing what food allergies can do to our bodies (and NOT in a good way)!!
Since all this happened with C, I got my allergies retested. I am no longer sensitive to soy, corn, or tomato (yay), but have a slight allergy to wheat. My 6 year old daughter K is allergic to egg whites only, when she was retested. Our allergist told us allergy tests can be unreliable in kids under 4 years, which is why we got so many negative tests with C. My two year old L can't have pears or pineapple, which we discovered through elimination diets. He gets nasty diaper rashes from them. And our 8 month old R can't have corn. There is only ONE formula that is guaranteed to be corn-free, and it's $10 per day....
All that being said, there's power in knowing what makes us not feel well and I would encourage others to not give up finding out the root cause of ailments. We could have medicated C for his ADHD, but it wouldn't have fixed anything. We know the cause and he is improving without any meds - none for ADHD and none for his allergies!
Oh, I want to welcome my FIRST follower too!! Thanks for coming by my humble blog!
Thursday, January 5, 2012
This is the month
This month, January, is seen as a time of new beginnings. And it definitely could be that for my family. We have been waiting for this month for almost a year; ever since we found out that J's job could be cut. Even with the tornado, things are still progressing as we had been told. J is up against four other people, including one co-worker, for the ONE job spot here. He is interviewing for several other spots within the state. Aaaand, several OUT of state. He has had one interview where they want to meet him in person before they give him the job, but it's half the country away, and is NORTH. I am content with the amount of winter here, so not sure how I would handle more of it...
And there's one south, only about three hours from where we are now, and we would have family close. Currently our closest family is over an hour away. We should be hearing from them any day!!
But, there's the moving. The packing, the selling the house, the finding a new house, changing schools, and so on. When we moved in October 2010, just over a year ago, we said we were NEVER moving again, unless God said otherwise...
God has definitely been working in our hearts. I am now okay with moving, and have started *trying* to get the house in order. And that's hard with four kids six years and younger. Oh, and R, the 7 month old, just became mobile this week!!
I am going through and getting rid of a bunch of stuff in preparation. I know it's not 100% certain, but stuff needs to go anyways!! I have ten plastic tubs worth of outgrown clothes, and oodles of unused toys!! I am trying not to stress about everything, and I generally have done well with that. The verse I keep close to heart is "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." Philippians 4:6. I know worrying gets me nowhere, and I am very thankful that the details are already planned!!
And there's one south, only about three hours from where we are now, and we would have family close. Currently our closest family is over an hour away. We should be hearing from them any day!!
But, there's the moving. The packing, the selling the house, the finding a new house, changing schools, and so on. When we moved in October 2010, just over a year ago, we said we were NEVER moving again, unless God said otherwise...
God has definitely been working in our hearts. I am now okay with moving, and have started *trying* to get the house in order. And that's hard with four kids six years and younger. Oh, and R, the 7 month old, just became mobile this week!!
I am going through and getting rid of a bunch of stuff in preparation. I know it's not 100% certain, but stuff needs to go anyways!! I have ten plastic tubs worth of outgrown clothes, and oodles of unused toys!! I am trying not to stress about everything, and I generally have done well with that. The verse I keep close to heart is "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." Philippians 4:6. I know worrying gets me nowhere, and I am very thankful that the details are already planned!!
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