Bloodwork

Yesterday Stanton and I traveled to New Orleans for his lab appointment. Stanton is a super uncooperative passenger and not a natural car rider. He has finally built up a tolerance to riding for about 45 minutes – then he’s done and wants out. No music, toy or video interests him. It was stressful driving with such a cranky passenger in an extremely heavy downpour! The drive to Ochsner’s usually takes an hour and 20 minutes. Yesterday it took two hours! But, we stayed safe and made it on time to our appointment (barely).


The lab techs were so nice and gentle with Stanton. He started to cry as soon as the techs put on their gloves…..he’s been through so much and knows gloves = something invasive. I have a story about going to the doctor on my iPhone so I calmed him down by quoting lines from the story. “I wait my turn,” “I stay calm,” “that was easy,” etc. Stanton really did great. Of course he cried as the techs took ten vials of his blood, but he didn’t fight or kick or scream. He sat cuddled in my lap and quietly cried big alligator tears as I sang in his ear.

The blood will be sent to a special lab that matches specific blood cells to foods and watches for a reaction. I don’t have a complete list of all the foods the lab will study but I know they will look at the major eight allergy foods: milk, egg, peanut, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, wheat; plus some I wrote on a list: chocolate, apple, peach, grapes, berries, etc. Stanton reacts so horribly to solid foods. So far we’ve found that sweet potato puffs and corn kernels are safe. It seems rice is a safe food for him too as he can eat the baby “mum, mum” crackers with no reaction, however, he won’t eat cooked rice.

We’ve been in food trials since April. Food trials are basically where you offer one food type for a week and monitor the reaction, then you take a week off for the body to recover. So Stanton can try one new food every two weeks. This has not gone well as Stanton has quickly reacted, and by quickly I do mean within a few hours, to most everything. Our ever increasing list of unsafe foods so far includes: dairy, egg, raisins, soy, peanut butter and pork.

The lab results will take a couple weeks. I’ll be sure to post something as soon as we hear!