eggs

we met with an allergist on monday and had ethan tested for an egg allergy. sure enough, he's allergic! you could consider that bad news, but I put it in the good news category. if he weren't, then we would have no idea what caused his reaction last week. so I think it's much better to know, avoid eggs, and have epi-pens on hand in case. in fact, I think we got only good news from the allergist. they covered his back in maybe 30 different allergy mixes and poked each one, but ethan was far more curious about what was happening on his back than he was in any sort of pain or distress. anyway, here's what we learned:

• egg allergies are one of the most common in kids
• egg allergies are usually grown out of
• kids with egg allergies often have eczema. the eczema isn't necessarily a reaction to the eggs, it's just a weird correlation. the nurse that walked us back looked at his cheeks and said, "are you here for an egg allergy?" we were like, um, yes, how did you know that, did you read his chart? and he said he could tell by his cheeks. so that was interesting.
• we will get him tested every year. previously we'd heard we wouldn't get him tested until he was 5, which meant 4 more years of no eggs. now at least if he outgrows it at 3 we'll know and start feeding him omelets!
• he's not allergic to anything else (including peanuts which we haven't fed him up to this point). he showed a slight reaction to citrus, so maybe when we have a choice of apple versus orange we'll feed him an apple, but the reaction was much much less than the egg reaction (as in I was like, "where? oh, that counts?") and we've fed him some citrus before, so we're mostly ignoring this. a reaction on an allergy test doesn't necessarily mean the person is allergic anyways.
• there is research on both sides of every allergy topic it seems. foods w/ high egg concentrations like omelets, quiche, french toast etc are obviously out. but the doc said we could try baked goods w/ eggs in them and watch him closely. sometimes exposing him to small concentrations like that will help his system get used to eggs. other times, once a major reaction has happened any small exposure will cause the major reaction too. so we gave him two pieces of bow-tie pasta on monday night and watched him super super carefully. he was 100% fine. we've since given him other pasta / baked goods items w/ eggs in the ingredients and he's fine. so that is FANTASTIC. it means we don't have to be crazy paranoid parents. when we took him to the Child Care Center at church last week they wiped down everything in the room before he came in in case some kid before had had a baked good w/ eggs in it before him in that room. I am very happy to not have to lead that kind of lifestyle.
• the only semi-downside is that the flu shot vaccine has eggs in it. apparently each year's vaccine has different concentrations so we'll wait to see if he can have this year's vaccine or not. while that's a bummer, I never had flu shots when I was a kid so I just don't think it's that horrible. probably blake, kaylee, and I will get our flu shots and hope that ethan doesn't get the flu from someone else. and if he does, well... that's a bummer, but it's only the flu.

So all in all, a very successful appt I would say. We can totally handle this. :)