After 5 months of a constant cough and the most recent sudden onset of wheezing 4 weeks ago, we along with our new pediatrician, decided it was time to take the next step and take Addie to a Allergy & Asthma specialist - Dr. Dennis Dilley.
We had our 2 hour appointment which included a 48 item skin test and the results blew us away. (This picture was taken with in the first 5 minutes... I refrained from taking it at the end of the 15 minutes of swelling before reading the test.)
After getting past the guilt of not listening our gut instinct 18 months ago, after our original ped. said allergy testing wasn't a good idea, we now know that Addie is allergic to a handful of tree & weed pollens like Lingustrum, Mesquite, Mulberry & Short Ragweed. 3 common mold spores in the air year around in our humid conditions. Cats like her mommy and dust mites (which is more than likely part of the culprit that makes her night time cough so bad in her room.) The food allergies are the part that were the most alarming, she is allergic to beef, chicken, milk, orange, rice, pecans and CHOCOLATE!!!! So we welcomed back the world of SOY MILK on the way home!
The interesting part is that as a child myself, 4-7ish, I had bad allergies and asthma and remember taking a medicine mixed in my applesauce every day. I was allergic to milk as well, and they got so bad, I even had to do a couple of years of allergy shots every week. As bad as it was, I gradually grew out of it, the asthma really only bothered me while exercising hard in middle school and high school, when I had my very first major asthma attack due to being a around a cat for the first time and jumping on a trampoline soon afterwards. As an adult, my allergies are completely gone (minus CATS.) Even this year, in March, when nearly everyone was miserable with whatever was in the air, I had no reaction. Dr. Dilley told me that many studies are being published now showing 60 percent of the children with severe allergie,s who took allergy shots as a child, grow up not to be affected as adults vs. those that didn't do shots. He said that will hopefully be what happens with Addie once she is old enough to do them.... pretty interesting. He also stated that allergies and asthma are highly genetically passed on and specifically same sex parent to same sex child, which makes sense, that Carter has had NONE of these problems.
There are 3 Asthma Risk Factors: Addie has 2 of the 3, being1. Family History (Addie has from me) 2. Positive Allergy Test to Dust Mites, Cats or Alternaria & something else (Addie has 3/4) 3. (I forgot to write down the 3rd but she didn't have this.)
As far as the game plan - with Dr. Dilley's agreement, we aren't going to go over board and dramatic and have hard wood floors installed in her room tomorrow morning (as her and Carter's rooms are the ONLY rooms in the house that aren't already hard wood) or cut the 2 protein staples in our house (chicken and beef) out. We are going to vacuum her room once a day, no more stuffed animals in bed, doctor said the curtains need to come down (which by far is the hardest part for me since they have such meaning!) and ideally, in the future, we will need to get the 10 year old carpet out of her room if the changes we make now don't make a significant improvement. We changed the 2X/day inhaler from Flovent to Advair, which is supposed to have better control for night time cough. Dr. Dilley said to continue Zyrtec on a daily basis and we are continuing the Singular for her cough, allergy and asthma control and of course CUT OUT all milk, most cheese, yogurt, ice cream, orange, pecans and chocolate and see if those changes alone, reduce the congestion, cough and upset stomach that Addie often complains about. In the last 48 hours, since these changes, we think we have already seen a significant decrease in the congestion during the day and cough at night, as it is almost non-existent during the day already. We aren't going to celebrate yet but rather take a deep breath and hope we are heading the right direction.
