Allergies

[Lolly1985]

Hi everyone

My little boy was born two months premature in June last year. He's struggled massively with reflux and poor weight gain and has been in and out of hospital continuously. We're at the point where we are now talking possible growth hormones to help boost him up He's dairy free and also has a severe egg allergy. Both his consultant and dietician said we need to try him with peanut butter as we need to know whether there is a reaction here too. But both me and his dad are terrified. The egg allergy ended with him being blue lighted to hospital on mother's day! He's been through so much and it's all ongoing, and I can't face him possibly being really sick again. I know there are blood tests which he could have that would determine allergies, assuming these are done privately. Would I need a GP referral for these? Any idea of how much it might cost? And do you think I'm being a bit dramatic?! It would be nice to hear any similar experiences. His consultant said yesterday to go for it and keep the day free just in case we needed to go to hospital. Great. Really reassuring.....

Thank you everyone

 

[MindUtopia]

I don't have any personal experience of this, though my daughter did have a suspected allergy at about 8 months (severe vomiting, listlessness and puffy rashy face after eating it, we eliminated it from her diet and reintroduced it after a year and there was no reaction, so it either wasn't an allergy or it sorted itself out). But as you already have two known food allergies and previous scary experiences with an allergic reaction, personally I would opt for allergy testing rather than trying to introduce the food. You might try saying to your GP that you don't want to introduce it without knowing first and press for a referral for allergy testing. They might be inclined to agree if you are really resistant to trying on your own. If not, you can ask them if they have recommendations for where to go privately. You won't need a referral, but they might just be able to tell you the most local private clinic that would do it. Your dietician would most certainly know. Otherwise, I would probably just start by googling private allergy testing in whatever your closest larger town in that has a big hospital. They will likely have a private service that will do it. Or there may be a private hospital as well that would. That's what I've done in the past when I've been looking to go private. No idea on cost, but I would assume it would be in the range of a couple hundred £'s just based on when I've looked to have some blood tests done private for myself. I'd steer away from any of those mail order test kits. There are a lot of companies that will do them, but they are notoriously inaccurate.

 

[Lolly1985]

Thanks so much for your reply and advice. I've heard bad things about the mail order testing kits and that everything under the sun usually flashes up as an intolerance. Think blood test is the way to go. Going to contact our dietician but first it's little man's first birthday so will enjoy that first Thanks again xxx