The Allergist

Hello everyone! Today I'm going to talk about the allergist appointment that I had a little while ago. I meant to write about this sooner, but anyway, let's get started!

So I went to the allergist mostly to just get new Epi-pens (they can expire, so every year we just get new ones), new inhalers for my asthma, and to revisit old paperwork that may need updating. We always have my allergist appointment right before school starts so all my new teachers and the nurse have updated information and aren't confused with old information. We made sure to get all the medicine we needed and my mom also had to fill out a lot of forms.

I was also given a skin test so we, my mom, the allergist, and I, could see if any changes had come up, either good or bad changes. A skin test is basically where you are given what I call pokes, or less painful versions of shots (the shot doesn't go into your blood stream) of a serum or sample of the food you are allergic to. The shot is basically a plastic, sharper than usual toothpick (the nurse called them "toothpicks with an attitude"!). The nurse dips the shot in the serum, which has your allergen in it, and sticks it in your arm. It literally feels like your sibling pinching you, but only for a second. Before you are given the shots, the nurse usually draws dots or lines or your arm so they know exactly where to put the shots. I was given a shot of milk (dairy), pistachio, walnut, hazelnut, cashew, and pecans.

They also always give you two extra shots, one of histamine and one of regular water. They call these shots the controls because they tell the nurses and the allergist if the test can be trusted. If the test can be trusted, the shot of histamine should be big, red, and itchy, and the water shot should obviously not have any growth at all.

I was going to take a picture of my arm so you could see what my arm looked like, but I forgot, so here are my results. The milk, cashew, and walnut shots were the biggest, or caused the worst reaction, which tells us that I'm allergic to these foods. These shots don't show severity levels of food allergies, but I know from skin tests in the past that my allergies to these foods won't be outgrown in my body anytime soon. Pistachio and pecan shots were also pretty big and itchy, but the only shot besides water that wasn't very big was hazelnuts. My mom and I were hoping for me to outgrow walnuts, but I think that shot caused the largest and itchiest reaction :(. The hazelnut news wasn't very important to us, so we didn't bother with any investigations of them.After my skin test results were measured and recorded, I was given LOTS of Benadryl to help with the itching. My arm was extremely itchy!!

So there aren't really any hopes of me outgrowing anything, but you never know. I might be able to someday.

Thanks for reading! Talk to you next week!!

My Favorite Foods, Food Allergy Friendly Style!

Hi there! Today's post is going to be about how I can enjoy foods that people without food allergies eat. Some things I obviously can't eat, but I can eat similar to what others eat. Check it out!

The foods I have to avoid are dairy, tree nuts, and sesame seeds. I'll tell you a little about the substitutions and strategies we've developed throughout my life. I'll also tell you about my egg allergy and how we avoided that (but I don't need to avoid eggs anymore because I'm no longer allergic to them!)

Dairy: 

Dairy is definitely difficult to avoid. Dairy is in cow's milk (duh!), all sorts of cheeses, ice cream, yogurts, sour cream, cream cheese, butter, margarine, some types of cookies, cakes, cupcakes, and pastries that you buy at a grocery store, cereals (and not just chocolate cereals), granola bars, chocolate and other types of candy, marshmallows, certain chips, popcorn, whipped cream/any sort of heavy cream, cottage cheese, and even more. Dairy is in a lot of foods, drinks, and products, so having a dairy allergy has definitely been a huge challenge. I can still eat a lot of foods though. Companies like Silk make delicious alternatives for things milk and ice cream. Instead of drinking cow's milk, my whole family drinks Almond milk (super yummy! I'll talk more about why I can have almonds but not any other types of tree nuts later.) Instead of cheese, we buy soy cheese, which instead of being made from dairy, it's made from soybeans. We also buy something called So Delicious (basically soy ice cream) instead of ice cream, soy yogurt instead of yogurt, soy sour cream instead of sour cream, soy cream cheese instead of cream cheese, soy margarine instead of butter or margarine, a certain type of chocolate bar called EnjoyLife instead of regular chocolate, coconut cream instead of whipped cream, you get the idea. I have an abnormal amount of soy in my diet only because it's one of the easiest substitutions. I used to drink soy milk when I couldn't eat almonds, but now I drink almond milk because it got some of the soy out of my diet.

Tree Nuts: 

I have an anaphylactic allergic reaction if I eat any type of tree nut besides almonds. This means I get a very bad, life threatening allergic reaction, which is why it's especially important for me to stay away from tree nuts.The reason I can have almonds is because I did a challenge for them and I luckily outgrew them. I now love eating almonds and they're so delicious and I'm very grateful that I can eat them. Because I can eat almonds, my mom and I will be trying to have me outgrow another type of tree nut this month in hopes that I can someday eat lots of types of tree nuts. Tree nuts are in lots of breads and baked goods, but they can also be found in granola bars, candies, and even strange things like lotions and face washes! (Dairy can also sometimes be found in lotions, but I've never found one!) I basically avoid any products with tree nuts in them, but if I'm baking at home and the recipe calls for walnuts or some other tree nut, I will usually just substitute almonds in.

Sesame Seeds:

Sesame seeds are by far the easiest allergy to live with out of all my allergies. The only things that I can't eat, as far as I know, because of sesame seeds are hummus and some types of rolls and breads, but that doesn't really matter that much to me because there are other sesame free breads that I eat and if I really want a similar type of dip as hummus, we make a bean dip for me. Luckily sesame seeds aren't found in as much foods as dairy is.

I used to be allergic to eggs but I outgrew my allergy a while ago and can now enjoy anything with eggs in it. I can't really remember what we used as substitutions, but I do remember it wasn't easy!

Thank you for reading this week's post. Talk to you next week!

Impacting Others...at Summer Camp!

Hello hello hello! Today's post is going to be about this project idea that I created at this year's summer camp. Hope you enjoy!

I've never actually been to a sleep-away camp, but I have been to day camps. Just a month ago I went to a camp called Inventor's Club, where we got to work on projects in groups of two, making things like pinball machines, paper airplanes that really flew, and straw towers that could hold tennis balls (Yikes! That was a difficult task!) At the end of the camp, we got work individually on actually inventing something practical and that would help other people. Whether the people we wanted to impact were our friends or the whole world, our teachers that ran the summer camp helped us create presentations to help explain our ideas to the rest of the kids at the camp. Some people made simple things and even made models to further show what their finished product will look like. Others took advantage of the technology we have today and made things that would use computers or phones to function. I decided it would really cool to make an app. Little did I realize the possibilities behind this little app.

I had a couple ideas of what I wanted the app to do, but in the end, I decided that I wanted to make the app for people with food allergies.  My idea was that when people downloaded the app, the app would have them fill out what they were allergic to. The app would then save this information. Once people had filled this in, people could scan a barcode of a product in a store (or anywhere, really!) and the app would read for any allergens in the product and it would tell you if there were any allergens in the product.

I thought this would be a good idea because it wouldn't just impact a couple people I knew. It would probably impact lots of people in my neighborhood, or my school, or my town, or my state, maybe even the whole country. It might even help the whole world! Pretty freakin' amazing!

But of course, making a complicated app like this one isn't as easy as 1-2-3. I found a free app-maker online that I thought would work, but it was nowhere near the advanced type of thing that I needed. I talked to my teachers about the problem, and they said that I would probably have to communicate with some very important people and companies to get this thing to work. And by important people and companies, they meant companies like Apple, Microsoft, maybe even Google! I was told that during the school year I could join the Invention Convention club they have at my school to see these companies and get my idea out. They also said that in order for people to actually trust it, I would need to get a global food allergy company/website, like FARE, to give me a "stamp of approval", or look at my app and prove to everyone that it does work and it does what I claim it can do.

Wow! This app may be more work than I thought it would be! I'll probably be joining the Invention Convention this year so I can hopefully get my idea noticed. Maybe I'll get to meet Apple or Microsoft or Google so I can get my app created!

The Invention Convention starts in the spring. I'll tell you more about the app once I join the club.

Thank you for reading this week's post. Talk to you soon!