Allergies.

On Tuesday we had James' yearly visit with the allergist. He sees a doctor in Macon that we LOVE. I've had some reservations about the fact that he seems to push allergy shots (if you've done these and had success {or not!} I would LOVE to hear from you...we're being considered for them as early as the fall!), but the time he takes with his patients trumps that for me. We had a 4:30 appointment and were seen at 5:00 and then we didn't leave until 6:30 - and he was with us almost the entire time.

As far as food allergies go, we're sticking to the same avoidance diet we've been using. He was impressed that we hadn't had any problems. He stressed that WE cannot eat tree nuts around James either. James isn't peanut-allergic, but he described the term "peanut butter kisses" and said it applies for tree nuts as well. If I eat a handful of cashews while I'm out at dinner without James and then interact with him later, he can react from them. It's tricky for others to remember that (someone who shall remain nameless ate a bowl of butter pecan ice cream while James was sitting in his lap...fortunately James doesn't have problems specifically with pecans, but it wasn't a great idea) but Eddie and I have been functioning that way all along. We talked about EpiPens and what to do about Will in terms of introducing nuts (hold off...) and we moved on from that.

He was WAY more concerned with James' seasonal allergies and asthma. A few things I wanted to talk about were the ear and upper respiratory infections we couldn't get under control last summer, ALL the medicine James is on, and the wheezing we hear when he "exercises." James has only had two ear infections/eye infections this year so far (and really, it was one that never went away) and that's HUGE for him. 

I mentioned that about a week after we left the allergist last year he got an ear infection and wasn't well until summertime. He said he absolutely would attribute that to grass. It fits exactly on the pollen timeline. He retested for grass in the office and James was positive for SURE. Because of that, we'll go back in July just to see how he's doing.

As far as medicine goes, we're keeping him on basically the same regimen. Poor kiddo. He takes an allergy medicine, nose spray, and asthma medicine daily. He's also supposed to do two nebulizer treatments a day and several additional nebulizer treatments IF he's wheezing and coughing. I whined about that and he switched James to an inhaler. We practiced and practiced and practiced in the office and that's part of the reason we were there for so long.

We talked about the wheezing when he "exercises," too, and he suspects it's just from asthma. If I can keep the inhaler meds in him (could be in part because we skip the nebulizer so often!), we may see that diminish. He did a breathing test with James just to measure lung capacity (I think). He blew into this tube as hard as he could to try to blow out "birthday candles." I think James was giving it his best shot, but he didn't measure like they'd hoped. Compared with other kids his age and race, he was in the 85th percentile, then the 76th, and then the 60-something. Of course, the goal is to see 100% across the board. They did a nebulizer treatment after that (whew! that stuff makes him HYPER.) and then measured again. The results were pretty inconclusive just because he's really and truly way too young to be doing it. It did show that he performed better after the breathing treatment, but we couldn't really tell whether it was because he'd gotten the hang of the "game" or if it truly made a difference.

We also discussed allergy shots, which I mentioned above. His theory is that for James we can get the shots in him young we can "cure" him so that he won't deal with all the medicines when he's older. We're still on the fence about them. We shall see...

Overall, we were thrilled with his appointment. We're going to keep on keeping on and see if we can't get through the next little bit of pollen season (I thought when the yellow was gone we'd be in the clear but grass pollen isn't yellow!). Hopefully we'll have a healthier summer than we did last year!