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this week's parenting fun
us: Oh, you know, we meant to mention, the prince has had bad reactions twice after eating food with walnuts in it, so our solution is obviously that he shouldn't eat walnuts, but is that something you should test for also?
his doctor: [already typing] What kind of bad reactions?
us: Vomiting.
his doctor: Any reactions to other nuts? Might as well test for as much as we can while we're in there. [starts naming nuts, orders blood work]
blood test results: This kid has thrown the following IgE levels:
- pecan, 2.30 (class II)
- coconut, 6.18 (class III)
- brazil nut, 0.53 (class I)
- hazelnut, 40.80 (class IV)
- pistachio, 3.94 (class III)
- almond, 10.20 (class III)
- cashew, 0.49 (class I)
- walnut, 15.40 (class III)
It is the nature of being (a) half Jewish, (b) half Puritan, and (c) his mother that my very first thought was to wonder what I could have done differently to avoid this for him. Of course the answer is: nothing, that's not how this works, I didn't avoid nuts when I was pregnant with him so that's not where his sensitivity came from, and I myself developed sensitivities (though apparently not literal allergies) to mushrooms, which I've never liked anyway, as well as to fresh pineapple and avocados, which I like very much, in my adulthood, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Fortunately it was about one nanosecond before I moved on to thinking about how to keep him safe now that we know this. We were already going to avoid walnuts on the strength of the anecdata, as I said; now obviously we're not going to do any more self-testing, and this kid is never going to have Nutella, though I also note that the concentration of antibodies doesn't always correlate to the severity of the allergy, so it's possible walnuts are his worst thing and we happened to find all of this by accident? I'm not positive he's ever had any of those other kinds of nuts, now that I think about it; maybe he had coconut and didn't like it, because that's a pretty clear dividing line between those born into his grandmother's family and those who married into it (that is: Himself nor his mother don't care for coconut, but my father-in-law and I like it fine). He's had peanuts in candy this whole time, or at least we haven't avoided it, and it's always seemed fine enough that the doctor didn't even test for it on this panel.
I'm choosing to consider it good news that the reactions we know about—the two times I know for sure he's had walnuts and then been sick or at least felt really crappy afterward—have been gastric rather than anaphylactic. I mean: for now, we're obviously not going to get cute about poking around to find the edges, but I'm vaguely reassured to think that if there's a slip-up in his future it's more likely that he pukes than that his airway closes. Little things, you know.
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In coconut news, I always knew I didn't like it; I discovered as an adult that I'm anaphylactically allergic to it. Ditto strawberries. And another friend who didn't like mushrooms discovered an allergy later in life.
Bodies man; weird things them.
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Before the transplant, I had already grown out of allergy to walnuts and peanuts, sometime in my 30s or 40s. So it's possible for the body to eventually stop being (so) allergic to specific allergens. That 40+ reading on hazelnuts, though. That seems _high_.
Glad you found out early.