Allergy testing

As many of you know Bella ended up at PCMC at the end of June for an overnight stay due to an allergic reaction to an unknown source. Today we had our visit with an Allergist for skin testing and we are a lot closer to an answer. The three main allergens are:

• Eggs:
  

Which basically we knew. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a little girls face shouldn't look like this after eating a scrambled egg Christmas breakfast.

Luckily so far, the facial swelling has been the extent of the effect from eggs, and it goes away after about an hour. We just have be careful of less obvious sources such as the "ah-ha" moment in the Buenos Aires food court when we remembered too late that Chinese fried rice is made with scrambled eggs. Dr. Allergist also said that raw egg is often more allergically potent than the cooked stuff, so we will be avoiding cookie dough for the time being.

• Shellfish:
  

Also not a huge surprise as it is the familial allergy group. The weird thing about it is that each member of my family with a seafood allergy is allergic to different things. My grandmother is allergic to Trout. My father gets deathly ill with Scallops and I have a mild allergy to Shrimp that I have mostly grown out of. One of my earliest memories is of being rushed into the bathroom by my dad to wash the hives I had developed after eating a shrimp dinner. I think I was about 5. Now I just get itchy hands if I have to peel shrimp. Dr. Allergist seemed somewhat surprised when I was asking in depth questions about what is defined as a shellfish. His comment of "most kids foods are fairly safe" in the tone of "what are you feeding your 18 month old" made me realize that most families eating habits are somewhat different from my own. We don't really go for Kid foods vs. Adult foods around here. My cousin Conner's favorite food as a toddler was Crab Legs. I'm sure that Bella has probably had Shrimp before without problem, but it will be interesting trying to figure out which Shellfish is her specific No No.

Number 3 and the real Kicker:

• Cats

Bella loves cats, Kitty was one of her first words. Thinking back, it makes sense and is probably the one that ended us up in the Hospital. She would always get a little congested when we would visit Grandma's and she would play with the Ancient One (i.e. Crystal), when she was still around. Two of the upstairs neighbors have cats but luckily they mostly run away from her before she can get too cuddly. For the time being I am just going to watch this one and try to prevent her from rolling around naked with felines. At least we have a good excuse now to turn down free kitten offers. We had a narrow escape from this the other weekend when we visited with Aunt Leanne. She tested borderline positive for dogs as well so no furry friends at all for us. Not news that will break either my or the Blue Prince's hearts. The down side is that this allergy leaves her at high risk of developing asthma, so another fun thing to look out for.

All in all I think it was a worthwhile visit and I appreciated my friend Kellie's referral to the Doctor in question. Anyone else have any fun allergy related comments to share?

Tree adventures

Last Saturday my dad was in-town visiting and invited us all out to dinner (yummy Vietnamese at Mi La Cai, two thumbs up, thanks for the recommend Jules). When we arrived home there was a police car parked in front of our building, lights flashing and blocking our road. In general, never a good sign. When we got closer we found the source of the commotion. One of the large trees in front of our building had uprooted itself and fell across the driveway and into the street. The miraculous thing is that this driveway is usually full of cars but none of them happened to be there when the tree decided to give up the ghost. It completely missed the building and didn't leave a scratch on the nearby fence. All in all a very surreal experience but great in a way to see how all our neighbors pitched in to take care of it. My husband and dad were the first on the scene, using our saws all electric saw to cut branches to clear the road. A guy from the city came out to help clear the portion that was blocking the road. He had two gas chainsaws but couldn't keep either of them working more than a cut or two. Other neighbors soon showed up and by the next day it was all cut up and neatly stacked out of the way. (Anyone know someone looking for some free firewood?). The pictures don't really do the size of the tree or the mess of branches justice. We had news people from Channels 2 and 13 out taking video and I actually got interviewed by Fox 13. On the whole it was defiantly one of those count your many blessings evenings.