God Loves a Peanut

So it appears Stephanie was right, I was totally making everything up. OR SO SHE'D LIKE TO THINK.

I just got a call from Peanut's allergy doctor (well, one of them anyway). She said his endoscopy looked wonderful with nary a eosinophil to be seen. She also called with his latest allergy testing. Of every allergen he's come up positive for in the past, he is now negative for all of them except for cashews and pistachios. Milk and sesame didn't even register, while peanut has fallen below the positive allergen line. IT'S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE. Seriously though, IT'S A FRICKING CHRISTMAS MIRACLE. Now, his doctor warned me not to get too excited and start shoving peanut butter down his throat. No problem, we don't have any anyway. She said people can test negative for something and still have a clinical reaction to it upon exposure. So we are to proceed as if he were still allergic to these things, avoiding them as much as possible. However, the likelihood of him actually dying now is pretty slim (well, for peanut, milk, and sesame anyway--gotta still avoid those tree nuts). Plus, he can still have serious GI reactions to these things, particularly milk, which is notorious for producing severe GI issues in the allergic crowd. But not LIFE-THREATENING issues, which is what has given us all ulcers for the past year and a half. He likely still has an oral allergy to apples and pears, and a GI allergy to soy, which sucks, but hey, we can live with that. So can he--literally.

So it would appear that he is outgrowing his life-threatening allergies, including very possibly cashews and pistachios, whose numbers have dropped since the last time. He's still young, things can still change, albeit very unlikely that they would, so we still have to be careful.

But do you have any idea what this means for us in the next few years? He will be able to go to church. He can go to the playground. He can touch a grocery cart handle. We can go out to eat again. He can go to a baseball game. He can sit with other kids at the school lunch table. He can have a cupcake at school parties. He can go on an airplane. He can visit my family. He can go on a mission. Someone will actually want to marry him. The deadly toxins they warned us he would not outgrow are disappearing. I can't even convey how happy I am right now. I'm so relieved I could cry and feed my kid peanut butter. Well, maybe just the first one.