cetan's weblog a man, no plan, a blog, golbanalponnama.

Does my name sting your tongue?

This is going to be a selfish post. If you cannot stand that sort of thing, I would encourage you to not read any further.

Nate has been diagnosed with a peanut allergy. His body's frightening, but not life-threatening, reaction a couple weeks ago was confirmed with a standard "scratch" test at an allergists'.

Let me just say that this really, really sucks. And I don't mean it sucks because of how much of a lifestyle upheaval it is for us as a family...I mean it sucks because I won't be able to do a huge swath of things that I didn't even realize I wanted to do...

That's sort of confusing, so some examples:

• I was walking through the store and realized that he and I won't ever be able to take a hike in the park or along the bike trail and share a bag of trail mix.
• Very little dried fruit, in fact, can be consumed. It's almost all tainted.
• We can never again go to, or order from, Nick's Pizza. Ever.
• Almost all ice cream and custard shops are out too. I can't ever go and sit outside Tasty Freeze or Diary Queen at the end of a warm summer day and eat ice cream with Nate.
• We will never be able to pack him a pb&j in a lunch box for when his class goes to a park or a zoo or something.
• I will never be able to share a bag of M&M's (or almost any chocolate candy) with him at the movie theater

What is most frustrating to me about this whole endeavor is that he HAS eaten peanuts before. He's had M&M's and he's had crackers with peanut butter. One of the few meats he will eat is chicken from a chinese restaurant cooked in, you guessed it, peanut oil. And he's never had any sort of reaction to anything he's eaten. So, what changed?

...

And now, I read things like:

The AAP recommends delaying introduction of peanuts until three years of age for children with a family history of allergies in both parents or in a parent and sibling. The group also suggests that mothers in such families avoid peanuts while they are breastfeeding and possibly during pregnancy.

and I wonder how much of this is our fault. I'm not allergic to peanuts but I'm allergic to dusts, molds, pollen, smoke and, as a child, I was allergic to milk. So, was Nate set up to fail because we didn't follow (or even know about) these AAP guidelines? The more I read, the more it looks like we completely fucked up on this. No peanuts of any quantity until 3 years of age is the recommendation? Weren't we told that after age 1 things are ok? I don't even remember any more. We certainly didn't give him any substantial peanut butter until recently, but he had the chicken in peanut oil back in December.

It's just so damn frustrating. And the more I read the worse it gets. The scratch test said peanuts-only and the allergist said that other types of nuts are fine, but most all peanut-allergy websites say things like "...most experts recommend peanut-allergic patients avoid tree nuts as well." Well now what?

As usual, I end up floundering at the end of my post. I'm just tired of being stressed and frustrated with this whole thing. I want him tested again by a different doctor because I don't want it to be true. I don't want this bullshit allergy shoved in my face every single day...I don't want to be "that parent" that has to talk to all the other parents in the school or at the church function or any other of a million fucking common events that we want to go to where food will be served asking about peanut content.

Oh, and Nate also tested positive for a salmon allergy. So there's that too, just less so.