Noah and allergies

I know I haven't updated in forever.  We have two wonderful boys and great life in Indiana. I felt that the need to blog just wasn't really there.  what i needed and wanted to say i could share on facebook in short updates. it was easy to  let our friends and family know how things were going.  Well, that has changed a little bit.  Noah's allergy issues are getting a bit more complicated, so i figured i would resurrect the blog for those who wanted a more detailed update on Noah and his allergy journey.

When Noah was vey little (6 months or so) we learned that he had allergies. No big surprise.  I had eczema and allergies as a kid, too.  So we worked on getting his eczema under control and figuring out his food allergies. When he was two, he had his first allergy tests. No surprise he tested positive to pretty much everything. This is when we started to carry an epi pen and really track his allergies and reactions.

In the last year, his eczema has gotten MUCH better.  His breathing has not. He was in the hospital for three days in January with a very scary episode of pneumonia.  Since then, my suspicions of asthma have been confirmed.  So now I have a kid with eczema, asthma and food allergies.

We recently went in to have his blood tested for allergies and it was not good.  Hs IGE (the amount of antibodies fighting off allergies) is off the charts at 2200.  Normal non allergic people are below 25.   He is allergic to milk, egg, nuts, cats ( we have two!)dogs, cod, shrimp, etc....as well as soy and gluten which he consumes without a strong reaction.  It is frustrating to see his body work so hard to fight something so invisible to us.

So we are going to see a specialist in the middle of August.  Until then, he has his daily and rescue asthma inhalers and we will keep monitoring his food usage.  Right now he is egg and nut free. He is able to handle soy, wheat and tiny bits of milk.

At this point, I just feel really lost. I thought that if we continued to try and get him acclimated to these foods, he would eventually grow out of these allergies.  It is quickly becoming reality to us that this is something he is going to be living with for the foreseeable future.  So we are determined to make the best choices for his health,  the big question is, what are those choices and what does that       look like?


When Noah was in the hospital last January, it was really scary for our whole family.   Something I never want him to go through again.  His dr.told me that his ige level being so high means that his body will have a hard time fighting off illnesses and his breathing could be compromised more than other kids,  this is the kind of thing I want to avoid, how do we make sure this doesn't happen again? How do we get him to be as healthy as we can?  Maybe I was living in denial a bit - I thought that this would just go away with time, but this hasn't good away and it is the "normal" we are learning to live with,

My name is Sarah and I have a kid with food allergies. Please be careful with him.

I will update as we know more.  Thanks for giving me a place to vent.