Quick recap of our girl’s story:
- Severe peanut allergy.
- Told in no uncertain terms from her original allergist to have strict avoidance of peanuts and that there was a “100% chance” that any exposure to peanut would cause a major and potentially life-threatening reaction.
- High peanut IgE levels (details below).
- Introduced to peanut Oral Immunotherapy (“OIT”) done by Dr. Douglas Jones at Rocky Mountain Allergy in Layton, Utah.
- We went through ~6 months of “Oral Immunotherapy” (starting with insanely tiny twice-daily doses of peanut protein and very gradually increasing the dose over 6 months until she ate 24 peanuts all at once with no reaction and graduated).
- Now she’s on “maintenance” twice-daily dosing of 8 peanuts.
- …And now here we are. We just got her labs drawn again. Here are the results:
In short, yes, the labs still look very scary from your classic school of thought on allergy IgE interpretation, but two point to remember:
- The labs have all actually improved since she’s completed oral immunotherapy.
- Remember that even with these labs, she’s eating at least 8 peanuts twice a day, and yet the IgE levels have gone down, and she’s doing just fine :)
And not that it matters much, but I’m still very much enjoying peanut butter in the house. Actually, I had some on my waffles this morning :)
Thanks again to Dr. Jones and his staff!
