Peanut Problem

On Monday, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. About a quarter of it was left on my plate, which was sitting on my desk, when Lucy climbed up into my lap. She pointed and otherwise made clear that she wanted some (she typically wants anything that she thinks we're eating). She's 16 months old, and to date, has had no problems with bad reactions to any foods (other than sometimes throwing them across the room). We have no family history of food allergies on either side. So I figured, well, it seems reasonable to let her have some of my peanut butter sandwich.

You may know what comes next.

Jake put her down for a nap. She was rubbing her eyes, and cried a bit, but we figured she was just sleepy. She fell asleep and woke up at about 2:15. When Jake went up to get her, she was crying and grabbing her ears and generally VERY unhappy. The ear thing made him think she had developed yet another ear infection (we've been through many already this year), so he called the doctor. Shortly after getting an appointment, he began to notice a growing redness....indeed, her whole face was becoming covered with hives. Bright red and itchy. Her face was a mess, and her belly and upper arms and legs were covered.

We went to her regular doctor where they determined that she wasn't having any respiratory symptoms, so that meant they didn't need to give her an adrenelin shot. So that was good. They gave her an oral dose of Benadryl and OraPred (a steroid). They warned us that the Benadryl makes most kids sleepy, but sometimes, with very young kids, it makes them hyper. I of course, imagined a hyper-active, steroid-induced kid terror, but thankfully, she became neither hyper nor super-strong. The medicine actually took care of the hives pretty quickly, and in fact, by the time we got home and tried to take pictures (for the future visit to the allergist) we discovered that the worst of the welts were gone.

But now, we think we have the dreaded peanut allergy problem.


We have to go see an allergist to get some more definitive results, but even then, the whole science of allergies seems a bit untested. Although Lucy didn't have a respiratory reaction this time, it's possible that she could have one next time. So we're also the terrified owners of an Epi-Pen, in case she has a future peanut encounter.

There are some nagging questions for us:

1) The reaction seemed a bit delayed for peanut (which is, from what I've read, typically instantaneous). Was her initial crying and eye-rubbing actually the beginning of her reaction? Or did the reaction really take over two hours to start and three hours to really get bad?

2) Is there any chance this reaction was actually to her latest round of shots, which happened last Friday. The three-day window, according to some folks I've talked to, makes this seem likely; however, the two doctors we saw both agreed that this was actually too soon for the reaction to be to the shots. Hm.

3) We found out today that one of the kids at Lucy's daycare is a carrier of strep. Every kid at daycare has had a case, and it's likely that Lucy has had it at some point, but since she was already on antibiotics for her ear infections, the doctor didn't give her a throat culture. Here's the rub: for some kids, in some cases, hives are the first sign of a strep infection.

Issues 2 & 3 leave me wondering if it's at all reasonable to suspect something other than peanuts. Don't get me wrong, we're not planning on exposing her to peanuts again any time soon, but I'm just not entirely sure it's peanut allergy. Occam's razor may apply here: it seems that the line of feeding peanut butter to baby leads most directly to baby breaking out in hives, but I guess I'm holding out hope that Lucy isn't doomed to a life of being terrorized anytime she sees this guy:
So that's the latest news from us.