"Big" appointments

With a kid like Abby life is full of appointments. Be it doctors or therapy or specialists or social work or whatever. We have a lot of appointments to keep. In my head they range on a scale from 0 (hardly important at all and therefore very low stress) to a 10 (extremely important and therefore usually very high stress). We only have a couple of 10's a year. The neurogeneticist is probably the highest on the list. The second appointment might surprise you. It's not the neuro-ophthalomologist or the neurologist or the endocrine doc or even the pediatrician. It's the allergist!

In terms of what limits Abby the most in life her food allergies rank right under her motor issues. She can't eat eggs, milk or blueberries or have ANY foods that contain those three. Many people hear a milk or egg allergy and assume skin problems or a mild allergy. For Abs that is not the case. She has a severe anaphalactic allergy to these three foods. We carry an epipen, we avoid those foods in our home and we keep her away from them at all costs. You wouldn't believe how tough life can be with NO EGGS, NO MILK and no blueberries (obviously we can live without that one ;D).

Today was her annual check up with the allergist. We go over her asthma, we talk about her eczema, we discuss any flares or issues throughout the year... then we get to food allergies. Most kids will outgrow their food allergies (especially those people with milk and eggs allergies). During the first two years of Abby;'s allergies we banked on that fact. Last year we went to her appointment expecting her numbers to be "trending" towards a milder allergy. That was not the case.

This year we went to her appointment expecting no change but secretly (and naively) hoping we'd be going for a food challenge very soon. I was extremely disappointed when the doc said that because her numbers were so high last year short of a miracle she is not much closer to eating eggs and milk. SO he sent her for the blood test (for which she didn't even flinch... just smiled at the woman poking her with a needle) and in a few weeks we'll see how she's trending.

So for now we'll remain naively optimistic for that miracle but in reality we settle in for at least another year of avoidance.