Allergies

At the crack of dawn this morning Noah and I trekked up to Seattle to see an Allergy

Specialist. Having more sinus infections in his short 4 years of life than most have in a lifetime,

Noah's pediatrician thought allergies were the culprit. So off we journeyed, 2 hours early, car

packed with movies and snacks for Noah and 5 recopied pages of directions for me.

A good navigator, I am not, and driving somewhere I've never been gives me serious anxiety.

But after we made it, a rediculous 45 minutes early, I was able to use that extra time to re-focus

my nervous energy into the series of pokes I knew he was going to get

for his allergy testing.

I'm a pediatric nurse. It's my job give kids shots and ruin their days.

But I've learned over the years that kids who are prepped before the shots usually do better.

Prepped and bribed, ideally.

Consequently, whenever a new nurse came into our room Noah stated,

"can you please give me my shots now so I can go get some new leggos?"

Totally exposed my plan to all.

Noah was a champ though it all. No tears at all through a series of 30 little pokes.

So proud of my tough little guy.

And much thanks to Ipod Apps. In the 15 minutes after the testing,

as his little arms swelled, welted, and burned,

the games Geno downloaded the night before were just enough to keep him

from clawing his arms off.

His favorite game was one where you slingshot kitties into space.

Clearly not one I downloaded, thanks.

Cats though, he was not allergic too so let's get back to that.

Here's my little buddy right before the injections with all the numbers on his arm.

"That's fun that you're writing on my arm with markers," he told the nurse.

(That one's coming back to haunt me at a future coloring session,

I'm sure).

After the injections, you sit and wait to see what your body's response is. If you are allergic to an allergen, a welt will appear where the serum injection was done. The size of the welt is correleated to how strong your immune response is.

Here were Noah's biggest allergies.

Trees (pollens) and grasses. These were all 4/5 responses, so pretty significant allergies. Our two options for treatment were to quarantine ourselves into a bunker like they do on Lost or put him in a giant bubble suit when he goes out to play. Seriously, there is no real way to avoid trees and grass in Washington. The Dr was incredibly helpful though and tweaked his current medication routine and taught me some other ways to help lessen the effects of the allergies. He pointed out that if Noah was going to be an outdoor kid and play T-Ball he would probably need allergy shots in the future. But if he was going to be a "nerd and on the computers all day" (his words) he might be able to skip it. Normally I would have made a joke here and sided with the t-ball kid, but I had done my homework on our Dr and read his bio before the visit. Stating he had a "strong love for computers" and "making his own glass paper weights", I politely answered either the t-ball kid or the computer nerd was OK by me. I think this was the right answer because next he told me a code word for how I could call and ask him questions directly and by-pass the nurses. And then he spent 5 minutes hunting down a lollipop for Noah. I think the Allergist and I are going to be great friends.

Here's something else. When I was on the Allergy and Asthma's website today I saw they had their own jokes page. Thinking I would find something amusing for the blog, instead, I found these gems:

Old Song Title: Blowin’ In The Wind by Peter Pollen Mary

Humans and bees have something in common – hives!

Another way to say that medications for allergic diseases are expensive: Robbing Peter to pay for Pollen

I really hope our Allergist didn't write these or our short period as best friends may have already come to an end.