After the great cashew butter and jelly incident in Chicago, we, along with Harmon’s doctor, thought it might be a good idea if Harmon got some allergy testing. So, on Aug. 19, we headed to the U-M Food Allergy Clinic at Domino’s Farms. Side note: while we were parking, we saw a few longhorns as this clinic is in the same complex as the Domino’s Petting Zoo. Holy cow (har, har), they are HUGE! I also can see how there would be some serious goring happening with those things around!ANYWAY, after talking to the allergist a bit about what happened and other things that we’ve figured out Harmon is allergic to, it was time for some testing. Instead of doing it on his back, which we were expecting, the technician did four picks on the inside of each of his forearms. He then had to sit for 20 minutes to give his body time to react to the serums. I held him on the exam table while he sat with his arms facing up and resting on a pillow. The clinic had portable DVD players (and Harmon watched Air Buddies) so that made the 20 minutes go by much faster. We could see him getting small hives on some of the picks so what we thought was confirmed. He is allergic to fish, eggs (straight eggs only, like scrambled eggs), cashews (NO WAY), pecans, walnuts and hazelnuts. Surprisingly, he wasn’t allergic to almonds (he has had those on a couple of occasions with no reaction) but the doctor recommended we just steer clear of all tree nuts just to be safe. We also had orders for a blood draw but we decided he had been through enough that day. So, we instead headed to Toys R Us where he got a nice Cars surprise.
Since the testing, he’s been just fine. We’re learning how to avoid tree nuts, mostly by reading food labels, and we have an EpiPen for emergencies. If I HAD to choose, I would rather have him allergic to tree nuts than peanuts, mostly because he wouldn’t be able to have PBJ anymore. This is his favorite thing in the whole world AND the thing that really got this allergy business started.
