Growing up big and strong!

Check out those muscles, I know they're kind of hard to find :) Jude's allergist called today with the results from his allergy tests that he had done last week. He was both prick tested and had blood drawn to see where his allergies were at. On the prick testing he was still allergic to both peanuts and dairy, and today we got the results of the blood testing. He scored a 2.37 for peanuts on the blood testing, which means he would be eligible for an oral challenge for peanuts. He has a 60% chance of being able to tolerate peanuts, hooray! For the oral challenge, we will go to the Children's Hospital and they will give Jude micro amounts of peanuts to see where/if he reacts. The room is fully staffed with nurses/doctors, etc. so that there would be immediate medical attention should anything happen. Because of the nursing shortage, we will need to wait until the Fall to have this testing done.

As for the dairy allergy, he scored a 19.5 on the blood test. Not the kind of test you want to score high on. It seems very unlikely that Jude will grow out of this dairy allergy, as he would have already shown signs at his age. Thus, we are going to pursue desensitization with the dairy allergy. This means that Jude will be given VERY, VERY small doses of the dairy protein over an extended period of time and slowly have those doses increased until he is able to tolerate some dairy. He will then have to continue to ingest that amount of dairy every day to remain desensitized to it. Again, because of the nursing shortage this will also have to wait until the Fall.

This is exciting news for us, since I think it will give Jude more freedom to eat outside of our homes without worry. And perhaps get some bigger muscles!

We've been having some weird and wild summer storms here, but have been lucky enough not to have any damage. Jude and I are off this weekend for a week of summer fun with Gramma Annie and Papa Martin. Gramma's dairy-free donuts should put a few extra pounds on Jude, if he doesn't wear it all off running around chasing after General. I think Papa Martin is going to put him to work in the garden too, it will be as close as Jude gets to vegetables these days!

So we'll blog to you in a week or so with all the Taber fun. Goodbye July, Hello August!