Now we know...

It's been almost two years since Jackson had his first skin reaction. After his most recent reaction which covered him from head to toe in hives, I decided to call our pediatrician to ask what we should do and at what point we would be sent to an allergist. Dr. Shrouds referred us to Dr. Amrol and we had our first visit yesterday. I was thankful that so far none of his reactions had been life threatening but wanted to find out the cause so I knew what I should avoid in the future...not to mention the fact that I was hoping to avoid visiting additional ER's while on vacation!

We arrived at the appointment with list in hand of all his previous reactions and what I could remember we had done differently, food eaten, environments, dogs, etc. After a great discussion with Dr. Amrol, he decided to test for specific items that I mentioned including cashews, dogs, and eggs in addition to some more common allergens in the environment and based on our history, i.e. Nick's shellfish allergy. Jackson did great! He didn't like the skin test but no tears were shed, he took it like a big boy! Immediately after the skin test, he complained that something was biting him and tried to scratch his lower back. And that was by far the largest reaction he had to...cashews!!! The other big ones included dogs and shellfish, both of which didn't really surprise us. Dr. Amrol advised us he did see a small reaction to the environmental/pollen allergens especially oak and unfortunately, that would probably worsen in the next few years. And he had a reaction to peanuts too, guess that's why Jackson doesn't like peanut butter :) We're sad he'll be missing out on yummy nuts and shellfish but at least we know what to steer clear from and what to do if a reaction occurs. We're now equipped with an epinephrine pen and steroids just in case. Here's a picture of the test they did on his back, this was taken right away so he hadn't really shown much of a reaction yet but the cashew was in D, left column, second to last row.