End of an Era.....Beginning of a New One

Ski and I have been thinking for a long time about transferring the care of Iz to a local doctor. A little history first...

Isaac began his journey with life threatening food allergies shortly after his first birthday. It was the now infamous trip to the zoo that lead us to seek out an allergist. We went to one and came out with a list of 10 foods to avoid and a bit of paperwork. However, I was soon to discover that the allergist neglected to educate me on the use of epipens and that some of his paperwork had erroneous information on it....like giving goat milk for a milk allergy. When my son wandered a bit too close to death because of the poor care from this doctor, we decided to find a pediatric allergist. At the time, there were only two pediatric allergists listed on our insurance plan. One was in Columbia, SC and the other was in Durham, NC. We picked Durham and the rest was history.

Shortly after we started going there, we learned that this Dr. Burks we had chosen had something of a reputation. He had come there from Arkansas and rubbed elbows with the likes of Dr. Hugh Sampson. After a few year, he began appearing regularly on national news and they began conducting studies in peanut, milk, and egg allergies. The peanut study is the most well known, but the other studies are just as successful. They have a long way to go, but things are looking promising. I personally know a lady whose son is in the peanut study and has been from the beginning. It is exciting stuff!! Not only is it exciting, but it also means that people are flocking to Duke in droves. So the long wait for appointments and the long nearly 8 years of driving, deciding whether to stay overnight or do it all in a day, and the loooooong appointments were looking less and less appealing. I also disliked a "non-local" doctor who I felt I couldn't call at any moment. And finally, every visit not only constituted the physician fee and testing, but also a facilities fee.

So after much discussion, and especially after regaining beef which meant it was no longer necessary to ship blood samples to the Mayo Clinic for RAST, we came to the equally sad and happy decision of "going local." As if to seal the deal for us, I learned right after our decision to leave, that Dr Burks took a position of Department head at UNC Chapel Hill. So it seemed we would have had to make a decision either way.

Today was our initial appointment with the dr who I have been seeing for 2yrs for allergies. I began going there after I heard another dr in the practice speak on asthma at a food allergy support group. Not only did I realize that I had more than exercise induced asthma, I saw that this lady really knew her stuff!! I love my current doctor there and he's helped me tremendously. You can tell he really loves what he does and he wants his patients to know about their condition, why he is giving them medications, and how to improve their lives. Plus he is SUPER smart and allergic to cats, too.

After 3 hrs of skin tests, blood tests, breathing tests, and conversation, we came out with a handful of information that I basically knew, but had a clearer picture on.

Isaac is basically very allergic to everything indoors...cats, dust, dust mites...
and everything outdoors....every tree and grass they tested and two out of six weeds.
He's not allergic to molds so he can roll in the leaves all he wants.
He tests positive to soy, but that's most likely due to all of the grass allergies.
He's highly reactive to all nuts....except for the two that I'm allergic to. Go figure.
He's highly reactive to milk
He's highly reactive to peanut
Strangely, he is still quite reactive on skin test to egg, but we knew that already. He tested low on RAST so we challenged and he's been eating it for almost a year.
Sweet potato? I forgot it. Totally slipped my mind. I didn't even think about bringing it.

We dropped a medication.
We kept most of them.
We added one -- magic nose spray.

I knew Spring was a bad season, but we'd have flares Spring through Fall so this explains a lot.

We're waiting for blood tests for milk, peanut, tree nuts, but the dr didn't think they would be much improved from our last RAST tests which means he will still be nowhere near challenge level for those foods. I'll try to remember to blog when those come back. But we're not looking for anything amazing.

At this point, I'm ready to chuck everything in my house, rip out the nasty carpet and start again. But unless I am ready to live on concrete and builder board, I need to have some restraint. So little steps......