The Carstens: Allergies, Allergies, Allergies

Abby has been a sick little girl as of late. A constant runny nose has been the most recurring ailment of all the things she's been catching. During a doctor's visit it was suggested that she may have allergies so we decided to get her tested to see if this was the case. Oddly enough, we were surprised to find out that Abby only had one seasonal allergy (to the Box Elder Tree) when we thought she may have many as Nate does. However, we did find out that she does have a few food allergies. She's considered slightly allergic to cow's milk and peanuts (the test states that any result equal to or below 0.10 is considered not allergic whereas Abby showed a 0.14 to cow's milk and a 0.15 to peanuts) and moderately allergic to bananas and tomatoes (I believe it was 0.69 and 0.85, respectively). This was especially surprising as we've been feeding Abby bananas weekly without any obvious signs of allergies. But we decided to cut out the bananas and tomatoes as removing them might help with her runny nose and other 'sick' symptoms. (We decided that the cow's milk was so low, and with it being pretty normal to have a sensitivity to it at her age as her body transitions from getting breast milk to cow milk that we wouldn't worry too much about this one. As for peanuts, she doesn't get any nuts due to only having two teeth so we just try and not feed her any items with peanut butter in them, but don't freak if she does happen to have something.)

Not having allergies myself (or at least knowing of any) means that I'm not too familiar with remembering to restrict items from our diet. This came to a head when I caught some random bug (that no one else in the family got) and went into survival mode for a week. If it didn't absolutely have to get done it didn't. Feeding Abby became an option of what quick-heated up item can I give her today? I happened to have Chef Boyardi in the cupboard so she ended up eating that for lunch every day for a week. Are you familiar with this stuff? If so, you know that it's pasta in TOMATO sauce. Yep, for a week straight for at least one meal a day I fed my daughter an item that she was pretty darn allergic to. Towards the end of the week I noticed a funny rash on her right side and only on her right side. It started out in a pretty small spot but as the week went on it got bigger and bigger. I was pretty concerned so Nate and I agreed to get Abby in to see the pediatrician. He also thought it was an allergic reaction and so we must have spent a good 15 minutes going over all the environmental changes that may have happened over the past week which could have caused this. In the end, without anything coming to mind, we decided on a course of steroids to quickly get rid of whatever was inside of her that was causing problems. Would you believe that as I left the doctor's office parking lot heading towards getting groceries at Wal-Mart a light bulb went off and I suddenly realized that I'd been feeding Abby tomatoes all week. I felt like such an idiot!

Thankfully the steroids did the trick and cleared up the nasty rash. Abby does seem to be feeling better as well. Hopefully I'll start doing better on remembering no bananas and no tomatoes!