National Jewish Day 2

Not a very long day today, only about 6 hours in the hospital, but we got a lot done today.

First David got his blood drawn! This really shouldn't be that exciting, but last year trying to get David's blood was an ordeal. He had had the flu the week before we came and was still vomiting Day 1 at National Jewish. We tried and tried and could barely get enough blood to run the necessary tests and we only got that because the nursing staff squeezed and pumped his upper arm. At one point he even passed out he was so exhausted. It was brutal. This year we got all the blood we needed for all the tests they could think to run in one go with a very minimal amount of tears and screaming. It was awesome!

Next, right after the blood draw, we had all the skin prick testing done that David will probably have to do this go-round. Skin prick testing is where they take a little bit of whatever they want to test to see if the patient is allergic to and use a needle to stick it into his back. They also do a couple of control samples. Then they compare the bumps on the control samples to the bumps created by the other samples and see which ones "pop" meaning that David might be allergic to them. I say might though. Sometimes a body will react to something by skin prick that they have no reaction to when they are actually exposed to it; unfortunately, there is nothing exact about the testing for allergies.

Anyways, unfortunately, everything that we have been avoiding as a known allergy "popped." So his skin results say that he is still allergic to wheat, dairy, eggs, rye, barley, all nuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, and fur and feathered animals. I had kinda hoped maybe one of them, say eggs for example, wouldn't pop.

There was some good news too though. Last year he had had mini-pops to corn and oats, even though we were pretty sure he wasn't allergic to them. This year he had no reaction, which, in theory, means that his histimine levels are going down. Also, I had been nervous that we would see new allergies, especially environmental ones, but nothing popped at all, which is really great.

Probably the best news is that David had no skin reaction at all to fish or shellfish, so... starting tomorrow we are going to start food trialing fish and shellfish. A food trial is when a patient is given a food that they may be allergic to in a controlled way and environment. It's really the only real way to know if someone like David is allergic to something or not. Skin and blood testing are great, but they aren't completely accurate.

It will probably take us the next couple of days to work through all the different sealife that we would like David to be able to eat, but once we're done David will have another whole world of food open to him. Sushi here we come?? :-)

Today they took some x-rays of David's lungs. There's not much going on with his lungs right now, but if there ever were it will be nice to have these x-rays to look back at and use as a baseline.

We don't have the results of the blood draw yet or the official results of the x-rays. We will get them tomorrow. Based on the results of the blood testing we will know if there is a grain we can food trial as well, or if it will still be a while longer before David can challenge any of his current known allergies.

I need to mention one more person, our friend Henri (hi Henri!). Chris and I graduated from high school with him, but the last time we've seen him was at our wedding where he served as one of Chris' groomsmen. By chance he is currently working at National Jewish, just three floors above us. So, we've gotten to spend some time with Henri both yesterday and today. It sure makes the time go by fast to have someone to catch up with. Oh, and even weirder still, one of the women who works in the peds unit, Kelly, also graduated high school with us. It's like a class reunion or something!