Allergy Test

Alexis saw the allergist today and she reacted to four/five things:
What they did was put drops of liquid with the allergens on her back, waited for one minute and then wiped them off, waited another 14 minutes and measured the size of the splotches to determine her reaction.

Looking at the splotches from the left to right... the one farthest left is the cat dander, next to that is dog dander... so you can see she's much more allergic to cats than dogs. The doctor says she may not actually react to the cats until she's more like 18 months and then we can expect to see more of a drippy nose, but the Zyrtec she takes should help with that when she's at Busha's house.

The next area was the control... basically a mosquito bite. That was just to make sure the Zyrtec she takes is out of her system and to help them measure the severity of her reactions. She had to be off the Zyrtec for 10 days before the testing.

Then the big one just to the right of & below that is Milk. We knew she was allergic but was hoping she, maybe, had grown out of it. Obviously not.

Finally, if you can see the little splotch on her diaper line, just to the right of her spine... that's soy. The doctor believes since that reaction is so minor, she could possibly tolerate soy if we gradually introduced her to it. So once her cold is cleared up, we're going to try that by adding soy milk to her bottles, one drop at a time.

Since she tested negative for all the other environmental elements, he says we've ruled them out for triggering her breathing problems, leading to more of an asthma diagnosis. So now we can discuss that with her pulmonologist when we see him again in October.

While they weren't the answers we were hoping for, they're still answers. I'm looking forward to seeing how she does on the soy so we can then talk with the doctors about what to give her for her "milk" intake to make sure she's getting the calories and vitamins she needs.

One step at a time... we're getting there!