Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Nothing to sneeze at…

Today was extremely busy for us. I had to get the kids to tennis camp by 8:30am, then I went to the gym, then home to shower, back to get the kids by 11:30am, a quick lunch at home and then I took Landon to the allergist’s office at 2pm for a scratch test. This isn’t the first scratch test he’s had, he had one in 2003, but he needed another to identify what environmental allergies he had. The first test determined what indoor allergies he had and those that were positive were mold/mildew, cats, eggs and peanuts.

Landon’s allergies seem to be getting progressively worse every spring, so we thought it was time to figure out just what’s bothering him.

Allergy testing, 2009

As you can see from his arms, they tested him for 28 different pollens, weeds, molds and other possible allergens. He tested positive for every. single. one. The hardest part for him was waiting 15 minutes without scratching. I can only imagine how itchy he was, especially since we now know he' was allergic to every one of them she put on his arms!

No wonder the poor kid is so miserable!

There are some mornings that he can’t even open his eyes because they are so irritated. He sniffles almost constantly and he’s always itchy. In the picture above you can see that his eyes are really red, and that’s because in order to do the allergy test he had to be off of his Zyrtec for 5 days prior. The poor kid has been going to tennis lessons in the mornings and then he’s also started soccer! Not to mention all the skateboarding he’s doing right now…he spends a good deal of time outside, he really needs his allergy meds!

So, our next step with his allergy/eczema dilemma is to start weekly allergy shots. And, because he has so many allergies, he will get 2 shots per week for possibly the next 6 months to a year. At some point he will go from once a week to every other week and then on from there, but I see a very long road ahead of us.

I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that this will be his “cure” and he won’t have any more days where he has to lay on the couch in the living room with a washcloth covering his itchy swollen eyes, while all of his friends are outside playing.

1 comment:

Carmen O. said...

Awww poor Landon. I was so happy not to have allergies as a kid. Although,I am allergic to gold, well most likely the nickel alloy in gold.
Noah had the blood test for allergies a couple of yrs ago and they said he's allergic to animal fur...he's never had a problem with that! I think it was the mold in other house.

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