The Medical Stuff - Update

OK, so I mentioned in my post from yesterday that among other things, we have been dealing with some medical issues. Long story short, we have come to realize that Taylor has a milk protein allergy. We believe she has Milk Protein Intolerance (MPI). Unfortunately, this "allergy" (it's an immune system reaction to food protein) will not show up on typical allergy tests and there are no diagnostic tests to confirm protein intolerance. We have seen GI reactions every time she has eaten dairy, some more significant than others.

We came to realize this allergy because Taylor had a "typical" allergic reaction in October of 2007, resulting in hives & a swollen lip. She had a similar reaction the next day to a different food. At the time, Taylor was 18 mos old and was eating "meals", multi-ingredient foods. She reacted to something in hummus and I believe the first reaction was from cinnamon. She had had some other very mild reactions that lead me to believe she's allergic to cinnamon. I could talk about allergies all day long. And I actually do a lot of "talking" about them on my favorite message board www.kidswithfoodallergies.org also known as KFA or POFAK (parents of food allergic kids). This board has provided me with an indescribable amount of information and support. I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone managing food allergies in children.

At this point, Taylor's allergies are under control with the exception of a reaction while we were visiting my mom in Canada mid-July. I overlooked a "May Contain Milk" warning on an otherwise safe food. So, that resulted in a definitive GI reaction. But for the most part she is pretty stable and doesn't have reactions very often. We avoid all of her known allergens which are milk, cinnamon and strawberries. I also STRONGLY suspect that she has an allergy to pine nuts because the 2nd time she had the "typical reaction" she had eaten pesto & hummus both of which contained pine nuts. We also avoid the "top 8" milk, eggs, soy, peanuts, tree-nuts, fish and shellfish. Taylor only eats a few items from a couple of "safe" restaurants (dry baked potato, steamed veggies with no butter) but mostly eats food from home. Which means I spend weekend nap-time in the kitchen but she's worth it!

We carry epi-pens and we have a wonderful allergist. He helped us realize that Taylor likely has MPI. She definitely reacts to milk and the symptoms are much more in line with MPI than lactose intolerance and it is very rare for little ones to be lactose intolerant. We have some allergy testing scheduled on 8/28 and hope to introduce some new foods after those tests. We have not yet been able to identify the individual food that triggered the reactions in October. Once I know what triggered those, I'll feel more comfortable introducing foods.

Many of you know that Taylor had severe reflux as a baby. 1 in 3 infants have reflux so it wasn't anything we were ever overly concerned about. It manifested itself in sleepless nights for all of us, and piles of laundry (I guess it turned out to be a good thing that between all the baby gifts we got we ended up with 36 onesies in 0-3 mos.) Most babies outgrow the reflux as their GI system matures. So by one year most babies are over it. Well, we had thought Taylor had outgrown it because she was no longer spitting up 20x/day. But there were several times between 12-18 moths that she still spit up and there were lots of other reflux symptoms. She has never been a good sleeper, I could "hear" the reflux and she got frequent hiccups.

All of this led us to see a GI specialist who did an upper endoscopy and pH probe study to determine the severity of the reflux. The tests were done in June of 2008 and confirmed GERD. She is now on Zantac & Reglan. Between her adamant refusal to take the meds & us forgetting to give them to her, she's only been on them regularly for a few weeks. Sometimes I think they're helping, sometimes I don't. I still "hear" the refluxing. I dunno...we'll see what the doc says at our follow up appt on Sept 11. I'm guessing he'll increase the meds. Maybe try a different one? Dunno...

Of course the reflux also causes frequent ear infections (stomach junk comes up and gets in the ears and thus causes infections, TMI?) Ped mentioned a referral to an ENT at the last appt if she gets another ear infection. She had a high fever for 3 days a couple of weeks ago but it was a throat infection, negative for strep & cleared on antibiotics.

So, there ya have it. That's the medical update. As I said, we've been a little busy.