Another Second Opinion

Before we left for vacation, I decided to look into getting a second opinion on Allie's corn allergy.  I had spoke to our current ENT doctor numerous times and asked him to re-test her but he refused.  He said that her reaction to corn was significant and he believes it was a "true" reaction.  However, he also stated that there is a 50% chance the reaction was a false positive.  Hmmmm....50% - that's not good enough for me. 

Of course there is so many things that little Allie wants to eat (even though she only takes a bite or two of them) and with this corn allergy, she's not aloud to have them.  We have been doing our best at keeping her corn free and honestly I feel like we are doing an excellent job.  It's not easy keeping her corn free - actually it takes a lot of time and effort.  Having a child with an allergy poses a lot of challenges daily.  I feel fortunate that Allie only has a corn & gluten allergy because I know it could be much worse.  However, corn is in tons and tons of food and that is where our biggest challenge comes in. 

Having a child with an allergy affects the whole family and I guess I want to make sure 100% that Allie is indeed allergic to corn.  Allie's corn allergy is a delayed reaction and apparently every reaction she has is internal because prior to her being corn free, we never suspected an allergy due to the fact she never showed any symptoms.  (unless we were just missing them). 

I contacted Allergy Associates of LaCrosse (after several friends suggested them to me) and I talked to them for an hour on the phone.  I explained our situation and they were more than happy to try and help us out.  They will draw Allie's blood and test her blood for any type of delayed reaction to corn.  They do not perform the patch testing at their facility they simply draw blood and check for allergies that way.  They may do some skin prick testing, that will be determined when we get there.

Our appointment is set for 1:30 on Tuesday, April 5th.  I'm very anxious for the appointment as this should provide us a definite answer in regards to Allie's corn allergy.  I accept that she may be allergic to corn but being the kind of mom that I am, I want to be 100% sure the first test wasn't a false positive. 

We were hoping to find an outstanding Allergist here in Wausau but since so many people recommended Allergy Associates of LaCrosse, we decided to go there.  It's 3 hours away which isn't too bad considering we used to travel 4 plus hours for most of her previous doctors.  Please keep Allie in your prayers on Tuesday as she gets more allergy testing.  I have been reading more and more about allergies and most people that have a delayed reaction to corn also have other food allergies.  I'm hoping that more food allergies are not discovered but if they are, that is okay because it's one more thing to work with in getting Allie 100% healthy.

Here are a couple more pictures from our trip to Florida......

The girls meeting Cinderella at her castle

Our family with Sleeping Beauty

Chloe's favorite - Ariel

Girls with Snow White

Allie's favorite Princess Belle

Me and the girls being silly at Look Out Mountain

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Back to reality

Our vacation is over and we are setting back into reality.  Florida was wonderful and everything about our trip was perfect.  We celebrated Chloe's 5th birthday and we got the eat lunch with the princesses in Cinderella's Castle.  The girls loved it and Allie was very excited because they made special corn & gluten free food for her.  It was hard to leave Florida and come back to the cold weather.  For some reason, I'm really looking forward to spring this year.

As for Allie, she's doing great.  Our Florida vacation was the first trip we took with her being corn and gluten free and also being a blenderized diet.  Everything about it went great.  It was hard to stay in a routine with making her blends and making sure she got every feeding but we did it.  She missed a couple feedings but overall I'm very proud of all of us for being consistent with her feeds and making sure she stayed corn & gluten free.  I am also proud of my parents because they took the girls for a day or two and they willing tube fed her.  It was a nice change because normally only Matt or I feed her.

Allie only had one vomiting episode - which had nothing to do with her tube feeding.  Allie was thirsty so she drank 6 oz of her milk orally.  About 10 minutes after drinking it, she threw it all up.  Makes me realize that she still cannot handle 6 oz of pure liquid.  Just another reminder that the blenderized diet is working wonderful for her :-).

Allie had a weight check this week and she weighed in at 25.4 pounds.  I'm happy with that weight because she gained 0.2 pounds in the last 3 weeks.  I know it doesn't seem like much but that's good for Allie.  Remember she remained at 24.4 pounds for almost 3 months.  So, Allie is making good progress.  We will be continuing with the 3 week weight checks for some time. 

Allie's feeds continue to go well.  She is now getting almost 5.5 oz at each bolus feed.  We are slowly increasing her volume.  We don't want to push her stomach too much because we are loving the fact that she is vomit free. 

Besides that, we are all adjusting getting back to our normal life.  Allie is having a couple "off" days with her behavior but I won't freak out until it lasts at least a week.  Not sure what has got into my little sweet pea but she's irritable and cranky that's for sure.  I guess we are all entitled to a bad day or a bad week right?

Here are a couple pictures from Florida - I'll post more as the day's go on.... enjoy

Picking oranges on the side of the highway - not sure if this is legal but we pulled it off :)

The Berndt's - Florida trip 2011

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