This is my first post on the allergy board. A little background:
My DS is 22 months old. Back in June he broke out in hives after having been exposed (accidentally) to tree nuts. Since DH and I were fairly confident that we knew the source of the problem, and we already avoid tree nuts in our house (DH reacts to them as well, albeit he vomits rather than getting hives), after speaking with our pedi we declined allergy testing. Neither of us really wanted to put our baby through that if it weren't absolutely necessary, and given DS's reaction was not of the life-threatening variety our pedi was fine with this decision.
This Saturday when DS woke up he had hives on his torso that have gotten progressively worse over the past couple of days. The reaction is pretty much identical to the one he had back in June (location of the hives, pattern, etc) only this time I have no idea what could have caused the issue. I spoke with our pedi this morning and got a referral to an allergist. Our appointment is on Friday.
According to the allergist's office, the appointment will last a couple of hours and will involve a complete physical and some skin testing, but beyond that I have no idea what to expect. Do any of you have some advice to share for a nervous mom?
Thanks so much.
**Update** DS's hives cleared up by Tuesday. On Wednesday he came down with a fever and vomiting, which made DH and I suspect that the hives were DS's immune response to exposure to a virus, which is a pretty common thing. Despite that (and because of the previous reaction) we elected to keep the appointment with the allergist, which was today. They did the plastic-type scratch testing, so no needles which was a relief for me. The results were inconclusive. He had a couple of mild reactions that the allergist strongly suspects were false positives because they didn't make a lot of sense based on DS's history and the fact that they were doing scratch testing on a wiggly toddler. To give you an example, DS's strongest reaction of a 2/3 was to sesame, which is something that he has eaten many, many times (the kid loves hummus which is chock full of tahini) without having a reaction. So, worst case scenario is that he is allergic to something that he wasn't tested for, but it seems more likely that DS gets hives in response to virus exposure and this is not food allergies at all.
Thank you again to all of you that responded.
OHM born 12/16/11, BAM born 1/10/14, mmc 06/30/15
Re: First appointment with an allergist. What to expect? **Updated**
Good luck at your appointment. You're doing the right thing. Knowledge is power!