I brought Finn back into the allergist today for some follow-up testing. When we had the blood tests done three weeks ago he tested positive, without any doubt, to: sesame of any kind, and cats and dogs. He tested "less allergic", but still allergic, to milk, eggs, peanuts, and soy. The Dr. wanted to re-test those last 4 on his skin because they were so much lower in severity than the first three.
So, we tested those 4 on his back, and the results are:
Finn is NOT allergic to soy and eggs! Hallelujah! Soy is in EVERY form of processed food, so that would be a pain to avoid...unless I was super mom and never fed my kids anything that might possibly be bad for them. I am not super mom. They eat hot dogs for sure. Also, Finn loves eggs, and it's such a cheap and healthy form of protein!
Finn IS allergic to dairy and peanuts. Neither of them will kill him if he eats them, obviously, since he has had dairy in small amounts for the past year (but I've never given him peanut butter or anything peanut intentionally). So, that stinks, but in reality it's not a big deal. It changes almost nothing in how I cook or prepare food for the kids. I already almost never cook with butter, only olive oil. We don't drink milk, other than Jonas having some 1/2 and 1/2 in his coffee. The only time I really use butter in when making cookies or something like that. Finn already eats Layla's imitation vegan butter on toast. I never buy sour cream. I never buy yogurt, etc.
The ONLY thing I am sad about is cheese. Jonas and I will still eat cheese on our pizzas, because...well, fake cheese is gross. Finn had just decided that he liked cheese a month ago! He asks for cheese for snacks, so I guess that has to stop for him, but really...that's about it. Sigh. I love cheese. I could give up everything else about dairy easily, but cheese? That is what I missed the most when I was dairy free those two looooooong times.
So this will all be relatively painless for me, but a pain in the butt for other people to factor in when thinking about him. Schools especially. :(
The good news: the Dr. thinks it is VERY likely he will outgrow the dairy allergy. We will test him again in a year to see if it is decreasing at all. Also, the Dr. said that if he got small amounts of diary here and there, by accident, it's not going to hurt his chances of outgrowing it at all. Phew. Because, I KNOW sometimes he is going to get dairy, and so now I don't have to freak out. However, I should try to avoid it whenever possible.
The bad news: the Dr. thinks it very UNLIKELY that he will outgrow the sesame, cats and dogs, or peanut allergies. However, we will test the peanut allergies again before he starts school, since that is something schools freak out about--rightly so. He does not need an eppi pen right now, so that's a relief.
Summary of the allergies in the Schaefer house:
Layla = dairy, eggs, soy (very mild, not something we avoid in her food).
Finn = sesame, dairy, cats, dogs, peanuts.
Lisa = nothing.
Jonas = nothing.
What the HECK??? :)
