Allergy Testing

It's been a while! Here's the latest......

It's been about two months now since we had the Elisa-ACT done for Emma Kate.  This is delayed food allergy testing done by blood. I felt it was important to do this to give her body the best chance it has at fighting off invaders, rather than keeping it busy with things that should not cause an immune response.

Such a big girl!
We had to fill 3.5 tubes with blood in order to do the test....quite a lot for such a little person! It was the biggest challenge actually finding a place to draw that much blood on a child, but we finally did. By the time we got there (3rd place we had been to in a row!) both of my kids were pretty over it....especially considering they had waited so patiently for an HOUR at the first place, just to be told they could not draw her blood. And, Emma Kate could not drink or eat anything until the blood was drawn. Ugh! Very frustrating.
 Anyhow, once we found a person to do it, to my delight Emma Kate hopped in the enormous chair and stuck her arm right out.  She had to be stuck a couple times in each arm but barely shed a tear! She really is tough (at least when she wants to be). At last, we had completed the much dreaded task. Now, I just had to make sure it was packaged correctly and send it off! I definitely kept my fingers crossed that it would get to the right place with no problem. Especially since it was time AND temperature sensitive, and a steaming 100 degrees outside. Thank God, it made it :-).

We quickly got the results...
Of the 144 substances tested, Emma Kate only had a reaction to 8 things and 1 food group. It was no surprise the food group it said to entirely avoid was dairy. However, it WAS very surprising that she had a strong reaction to peanut, white rice, and Green dye #3. Also, a moderate reaction to lemon. The peanut definitely got my attention. It just so happened that a while back when she had a relapse she had just started eating a peanut butter cereal with soy milk every day. The DAY she started eating it was the day her numbers started jumping...100, 30, trace, 300....all over the place.  I think it was the combination of these two things that caused her to start spilling. Doctors of course refuse to acknowledge food could play any role with NS, but sometimes you just have to go with your mommy instinct. We will NOT be eating that cereal with soy milk EVER again.

I do think it was very beneficial to do the testing. Before we got her results I used lemon ALL the time to cook and I would have never known it bothered her! Also, since we eat a lot of gluten free things (she is not entirely GF anymore, just DF), she was eating a good bit of white rice. We pay close attention to that now. The testing made me much more aware of things that were happening in her body. Most people do not realize that you can have delayed food sensitivities that do not come in the form of a rash or anaphylactic shock. They can be sneaky and mess with your body in seemingly unrelated ways.