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Our latest “everyday miracle”…
Mel and I were discussing one night last week how we haven’t had any blue jays in our backyard and we would love to attract them in.
Sure enough, the next evening, we were treated to the presence of not one, not two, but eight blue jays in our yard, taking turns eating from one our bird feeders. 
(We didn’t do anything different to attract them in, but they must have gotten our message to visit us nonetheless!)
Yesterday Alex had an oral peanut challenge in the hospital passed it with flying colours.
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.
We were very close to cancelling for the second time , but I “checked” in and got the message to do it, and we did and it was a complete non-issue.
Mel 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 Alex happy during the three hours, playing with him, and keeping Mel and I calm as well.
The peanuts didn’t even affect Alex’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 is the boy who in the past has been reactive to everything (including things like rice and chicken). We are very thankful. Extremely thankful. Overjoyed. In awe and disbelief.
It completely changes our whole perspective and paradigm and I feel like Alex 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.
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 Alex a bit of peanut butter on his glutenfree bread and see how he does!
Something is shifting… On Friday, Alex got retested for allergies (pricktest) and EVERYTHING that they tested for came back negative (i.e., no allergies) — including many things that he had previously tested for as positive. They didn’t test for a few things for which his blood work (RAST test) had came back strongly positive (milk, cats, fish and wheat), but everything else came back negative (and they tested him for about 15 things, including mixed nuts and eggs — things that he was reactive to in the past)… I’m still in shock about it! We’re slowly going to reintroduce some of the foods that came back negative in a systematic way to see how he reacts when he ingests the food.
It’s a bit odd because 8 weeks ago, they did blood work and all of the things that they tested for came back strongly positive, but now everything is coming back negative. (Maybe the blood was showing the historic signs of allergies and the prick test is showing that currently, his system is no longer as sensitive?)
In any case, I am still in a state of shock, and also complete awe.
They are actually going to get him to do an oral challenge of peanuts in the hospital next month. The truth is that I have a lot of calm about it, so I feel as though everything is going to be okay.
We are now going to be working closely with a dietician to start to systematically reintroduce other foods back into his diet. We’re starting with rice this week.
I am in utter awe about it all. It feels like a big HUGE MIRACLE. I am utterly thankful.
