Hannah and her Allergies

When Hannah was about 9 months old. Maybe 10. She ate a hunk of frozen peach in one of those little mesh things. And got a hideous rash around her face and all inside her mouth.

No more peaches for Hannah.

When Hannah eats anything with jelly on it she gets a redness anywhere it touches around the outside of her mouth.

No more jelly/jam for Hannah.

A few weeks ago Hannah grabs my spoonful of peanut butter while I was answering the door. All around her mouth and everywhere she drooled (she had on no shirt) there was a red rash. Lines all down her tummy. Within probably an hour of that we had an appt at an allergist for Dec 12th. (Yesterday)

So yesterday, Drew, Hannah & I headed off to Casper. (There is – of course – no allergist in Rawlins. Imagine that.)

At the appointment we went over everything that happened before and they did a standard scratch test on her back with the addition of peaches and watermelon.

The results are that she is allergic to peanuts.

And dust. Yes – dust.

And cats. That’s right. We have two cats. We won’t within the next 48 hours or so. Maybe today.

If you know me at all, you know – I love my cats. I’ve been crying on and off about it today but there really is no choice to be made to me. I love my cats but not enough. Hannah’s comfort and health obviously come first.

If she didn’t touch and love the cats so much that would help. But it’s just not the case. Hannah LOVES the cats and (unfortunately) they actually love her back. They like to lay on her, rub on her, snuggle with her. She likes to rub her face in them. That kind of thing.

Probably 2 days ago I said to my mom – Something is not right with Hannah. It’s been 2ish weeks and something is just off. I’m not sure what to do. In the end I decided that we’d go to the allergy appt and then go to the regular doc this week to find out what’s up if the allergies weren’t the problem.

But guess what I realized on the way home yesterday? That’s exactly how long we’ve had the new kitten. Hannah picks that kitten up about 100 times a day and carries her around the house. Rubbing her face in the kitten heaven only knows how many times. So OF COURSE it got worse since the kitten came.

Sigh.

As far as the severity of her allergies goes, it’s not life threatening – the peanuts because she has no breathing issues at this point. But with each exposure to peanuts it will get worse. He said we don’t need an epi-pen now but that we’ll need to talk about that when she goes to preschool/school. (because that’s obviously the place where she’s gonna get accidental exposures)

The dust. I don’t even know where to go with that. We live in WYOMING. Oh my word. Of course dust is just everywhere. There is no escaping it. He did tell me when I do things like vacuum she needs to not come back in the room for at least 45 minutes to let everything settle.

I need a new vacuum cleaner designed with Hepa filters. It would be better if we didn’t have carpet. (Easier said than done.)

I think that is all. Oy.

Drew took this picture about 5 minutes into the 15 minute waiting period. You can’t see the cat one very well because of the lighting but it got just as bad as the dust one. And they all got worse than what you see here in this picture.

The peaches one was just the slightest pink dot. With most of them you can see they didn’t react. There were 23 spots in all.

ETA: He thinks she’s growing out of the peaches thing. He said to try them again later.