The Egg Experiment

Most of you know that my boys both have food allergies. They share allergies to eggs and peanuts (with Samuel also allergic to milk). We had found out 2 years ago that Samuel was allergic to eggs through the reactions to it. Darius tested positive for an egg (and peanut) allergy on the RAST blood test. Lately there have been some medical studies that have questioned the accuracy of the blood tests. Meaning that there can be a lot of false positives in regards to food allergies. I started to wonder if Darius really was allergic to eggs since the only exposure he has had was "in utero". We decided to test their egg allergies.

For the first time in 2 years, I bought eggs last Friday night. On Saturday afternoon, I made brownies that called for 2 eggs. I gave each of the boys a small brownie to try. They both dug right in to them. But within 1/2 a brownie, Samuel started looking around, his eyes started watering and we could tell he wasn't feeling well at all. Josh asked him if he felt sick and he said yes. He rushed Samuel to the sink in time for the brownie and his lunch to come back up. We got him cleaned up, gave him a drink and a dose of Benadryl and watched him for awhile. But he was fine after that. Meanwhile, Darius devoured the brownie and asked for more (which we didn't give him). We kept a wary eye on him for awhile afterwards, but he seemed to do okay. That night though, we noticed eczema patches starting up on his ankles and behind his knees. We're not sure if the eczema is a reaction to the eggs or not. We are going to clear his eczema up and then try eggs again with him to see if the same thing happens. Depending on the next reaction, we will slowly expose eggs into his diet.

I'm not surprised at Sam's reaction. Part of me was hoping that he had grown out of the allergy, but I knew that he probably hadn't. We are fortunate that both boys' (but especially Samuel) reactions are not anaphylactic reactions. We've never had to use the Epi-pen with them and my prayer is that we never will. The thought of jabbing a needle in my severely reacting child's leg brings out the fear in me. Benadryl works great at shutting down their reactions. We will probably wait another 2 years before we retest our boys for their food allergies. Maybe by then, things will have changed for the better.