The Allergy Test

Well, we did the big allergy test. After Liam's scary allergic reaction to hummus and then, recently, his several hive outbreaks, we went to a pediatric allergist who did some testing. I was almost positive it was pine/pine nuts. He had also had little hive reactions at his baby-sitter's. Sunday night, before the test, I figured out that dogs might be a problem because he broke out in hives when he hugged my sister's lab, Lucky. That REALLY freaked me out since we have our little Albus, who is one of Liam's best friends.
Anyway, they tested him for different grasses, trees, all the hummus ingredients, peanuts, dogs, etc. I was SHOCKED to find out how allergic he was to sesame and dogs. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Sesame isn't an allergy that has been studied as much, but it's becoming more of a problem because they are replacing peanuts in a lot of foods, due to allergies, with sesame. They haven't studied the chance that he could outgrow it, but she said that taking precautions can increase the chance, so it's worth a shot. So, we are avoiding sesame, even in trace amounts, to increase his chance of outgrowing it. This means that he can't have any food that had a chance of coming in contact with sesame. ie, Asian food(they don't clean the wok after each meal), fast food (not a big problem, but sesame seeds from buns float everywhere), candy or cookies from people who aren't trained to look for sesame, food that people 'scoop' as it may have 'scooped' other food etc. So, this should be an interesting new adventure!
As for the dog issue, there are some measures we can take at home to help get things back under control. She told us that she could definitely see in his nose that he had lots of allergy things going on. This is also the reason he got so sick this winter. His immune system was saturated with dog/pollen(he's also allergic to oak), so that when a virus was added to it, his little body couldn't handle much more. So, Albie isn't allowed in Liam's room, he has to be washed once a week with hypoallergenic soap, we have to vacuum weekly with a hepa filter vacuum(luckily we have our much-loved Dyson), install a hepa filter on our furnace, and dust weekly with Swiffer. Hopefully this will get things back under control. The doctor will reevaluate in January to see how our avoidance measures our going.
Anyway, that's the update with that! I have zillion pictures from our Murphy's trip to post, but that will have to wait as I've got a million thing I should be doing. For now, here's my little trooper with his test. He did a great job not scratching--although getting them put on what a tad traumatic.