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!!