May 29th 2019- Andi graduated from Dr. Kim's Peanut OIT by reaching her maintenance dose of 8 peanuts per day! She did not like the attention or the t-shirt. I'm thinking they need a redesign with glitter and rainbows.
Sometime in June at a friend's birthday party i made the ultimate mistake of forgetting to pack a birthday cupcake and of course the two kinds of cake provided were not safe for her to consume. It's the first time i forgot!! I had to distract her by going to play some arcade games while they served cake and letting her get some candy from a machine, and she seemed fine with it. Mom fail!! (sorry my love!)
July 2nd 2019- Andi had her follow up appointment with Dr. Kim. She continues on the maintenance dose for her peanut. We did a skin test for all tree nuts and eggs to see where things stand. Looks like her egg and egg yolk remain positive- about the same and Dr. Kim would like to challenge that one. I remember Dr. Miranowski had said the same thing about challenging egg, so I'm ok doing that. Her tree nut reactions kind of looked worse, and i think it was largely because the reactions of pistachio and cashew were so big causing so much redness. The almond was bad enough that Dr. Kim did not want to challenge and wants to include it in the OIT. The other two minimal reactions were hazelnut and walnut, we will challenge those first. Pecan and brazil nut are negative and can be given at home. Our challenges are in August, September and October. So getting on the OIT schedule for November is our earliest bet. I will try to update how the challenges go.
Somewhere in here we had a couple times at day care where I approved items she COULD eat but it wasn't communicated properly so she was still left out. In one occasion i approved a betty crocker cookie mix, which she could eat because the egg would be baked. In another occasion I made sure to pre-approve the popcorn brand for their movie day and she was also left out. They felt bad and said they would improve the communication in the future. I just wanted to mention this because while I'm so happy there were no incidents, it's just a side effect of her situation and it's unfortunate.
July 8th or 9th- OMG and how could i forget, Andi's first field trip!! Can you possibly guess where they went???
COLD STOME CREAMERY.
So I had to do some investigation to find out which one they were going to and then call and ask what kinds of tree nuts they used. I guess they have pistachio ice cream but it might not even be real pistachios. Also they don't have pistachio and cashew as toppings. The other stuff like PB and almond is serious too, but i was comfortable enough to let her attend and walk around the shop. We packed her own little container of A LA MODE pink sprinkle!!! (AND a cupcake) and i think she was ok with it.
Lord have mercy, I had to roll my eyes big time at a field trip to one of the most concerning places we avoid. Not one of the most allergy-aware choices. We rolled with it and conquered.
July 14th 2019- Andi turned 5 and we took everyone to Chuck E. Cheese's for dinner and play. She ate pizza around 5:30. We didn't get home until almost 8pm and all had some cake. We then gave her her peanut dose around 8:15 which is pretty late for us. After chatting with my mom on the phone i noticed Andi was grumpy but figured it was because they were up SO LATE. Then i noticed her lip looked a little swollen. I momentarily freaked out and reassured myself my looking at her action plan. "Significant" swelling of lips is a major symptom and requires epi pen. I didn't think it was significant and there was no swelling inside her mouth. I opted to call Dr. Kim. After chatting with him, he said we may or may not give benadryl, but to sit her down with a snack. He believes she did not have enough food in her stomach with the dose. I was able to text him a picture of her lip as well. About an hour later there was significant improvement enough that we sent her to bed. I checked on her at midnight. We chose not to do benadryl. it was pretty scary, when you get out of your routine on holidays and birthdays you are susceptible to this. It also was a big reminder that she is still actually allergic to peanut, and our circumstances are very controlled surrounding her dosing. Hopefully that will improve over time, but probably a couple years before we can reduce her dosing to a couple times a week. In the photo below you can see her lip at 8:30pm (top) and 9:30pm (bottom) after resting/snacking.
In addition to gearing up for challenges, I am gearing up to have a discussion on implementing a 504 plan for KINDERGARTEN. Here is the majorly awesome article on 504's- what they are and why they are important. It has been so helpful to me.
https://www.nutfreewok.com/504-plan/
I think I'm all caught up for now. Getting on the lap top is hard, I may try to do shorter updates from my phone in the future.
