Thanks everyone
The allergist was phenomenal and even better, he confirmed not only that I'm not nuts but I did the right thing all along by continuing to breastfeed and eliminate. Completely selfish here but I felt so validated yet again today.
She tested negative yet again
. We went over everything beforehand and I didn't need to show him any pics, he was totally understanding and said he had a theory before he tested. The scratches were a type of little blue stick that he pricked her once with on her back and did a bunch for the most common food allergens with children.
When he came back in he wrote up a requisition for some bloodwork for six others (banana, orange, strawberry, dairy, soy and wheat) to get an IgE check on. His theory is that she's got non-IgE mediated food responses where she gets a build up of things in her system. Also known as food intolerance. So that's the potentially good news. *Most* kids do outgrow this and it explains every single thing that we've gone through with her. I came home and googled and learned so much more and yes, food intolerance are much harder to prove. She does have a delayed reaction and she has several reactive symptoms so that's why we've struggled so much.
He was a bit upset when I told him how long we've been struggling with this without much medical support. He said he wished someone had ordered celiac bloodwork even though it may show a false negative before we took her off of the wheat. So we still don't really know on that one. To prove celiac at this point we would have to put her back on wheat and go through a horrible time with her and the bloodwork might be negative anyhow. Then we would look at doing a scope. Dh and I aren't prepared to do that just to have a diagnoses. We're going to talk about it with the allergist in six weeks when her bloodwork comes back from the children's hospital.
I have to say I was rather proud of my tough little girl. She didn't make a peep throughout the scratch test or the bloodwork though it was obvious she was pretty mad when they jabbed her with the needle. After the bloodwork was done, the nurse asked if she wanted a sticker. She crossed her arms and said "no! I no like that! Not very nice!" After I coaxed her to take a sticker she literally stomped out of the room with her arms crossed saying "humph!" over and over again. It was hilarious.
So the good news is that she doesn't have a proper allergy and the chances of her outgoing all of this are apparently much higher.
The bad news is that intolerance are much harder to figure out and we'll likely have to continue doing what we're doing. She also tested negative for nuts but no way will I give her some peanut butter tomorrow! Still a bit in the dark but a little more clarity as to why she keeps testing negative yet having reactions to food.
Oh, and I'm not nuts. That really was nice to hear today
