Oral Challenge #7

If you're keeping track, no, you didn't miss Oral Challenge #6...I forgot to post about it. A week and a half ago, I gave Lukas 2 peanut M&Ms and he had no reaction, just like Oral Challenge #5.

So I thought, since I was out of peanut M&Ms, let's try peanut butter!

Lukas mentioned something about peanuts at lunch today, so it reminded me and I pulled out the peanut butter jar, got a tiny bit of peanut butter on a spoon, put a little honey on it to make it sweet, and gave it to Lukas.

Suddenly, he didn't want to eat it. I finally convinced him to open his mouth and eat it, but then he wouldn't swallow it. He held it in his mouth for a while, started to spit it into his hands, then finally ate the little bit that was left in his mouth. Ok, it's in!

While the kids were watching Sesame Street with Tom, Lukas asked, "what's this bump on my lip." It had only been 15 minutes since the peanut butter, but already there were hives all around his mouth. The bump he was talking about was the middle of his upper lip, swollen to three times its normal size.

I gave him Benadryl, of course, and 20 minutes later I saw that it was taking effect. After 40 minutes, the hives were practically gone. Lukas slept during quiet time today (normally he doesn't), I'm sure because of the Benadryl haze that overtakes one about 1-2 hours after consuming the stuff...and I gave him a good dose of it.

After he woke up from his nap, I called our pediatrician and discussed what happened, and she was very surprised that he would have six challenges with a whole peanut with no reaction, and then have a reaction with peanut butter. She suggested it might be something in the peanut butter, but I told her it was natural peanut butter, just peanuts and salt. She's going to discuss it with an allergist and get back to me...we might see an allergist, but I don't know what that's going to tell us that we don't already know: Lukas is allergic to peanuts, in one form or the other.

I'm so glad I hadn't let down the guard on him consuming peanuts outside the home. But I have to say I'm disappointed...I thought he had outgrown this allergy.