Itchy Lily

One day last week while Lily was feeling particularly horrid I stopped at my friend Jakies house on the way to taking Lilipop to the Pediatrician. Lily has been there countless times but this time something was different for her. Jakie's cat Honey, in a ridiculously short amount of time, made Lily break out in hives. (My family and Jakie's pets = not good LOL)

We de-haired her clothes, wiped down her skin and headed off to her ped appointment. What is the first thing the nurse notices? The hives. In all fairness they were kind of hard to miss they were even on her face. After seeing Barbara about Lily being sick we discussed Lily's reaction and I agreed it was time to get her allergy tested.

Yesterday was the day. Since the kid hasn't been through enough lately we just decided to throw this at her too. Sometimes you just get really lucky when you pick a doctor at random and yesterday was one of those days. This doctor was fabulous and had a great sense of humour. One thing that he had in common with Lily's pediatrician was a common belief that it was not the cat that made Lily break out in hives but more likely something that she ate that morning. I stood firm in my belief that it was Honey.

In came the nurse with her tray of 32 nasty little scratchers to poke Lily with and we were off. She marked up Lil's arm and the first scratch was histamine and within seconds she responded.
She then continued down all 4 columns until she was done. The far right as you look at the photos are food and cat and dogs. We were watching these really closely.

Immediate reaction to histamine. Everyone has that.

As each minute passed she started to react to 4 things and get itchier and itchier but she could not scratch so behind closed doors she turned into a ninja and had herself and her mother in fits of giggles.

Nothing happening here

Something going on here but we don't know what it is.

Aha, see the bump on her arm that is tucked under that's CAT! 

After her 20 minutes was up the doctor came back in (he back in before that to just to check on her) and he looked at her rolled his eyes and sighed. She is allergic to cats and quite highly allergic to cats! He doesn't get it. She is also allergic to grass but only the kinds of grass that we have down here in Florida, the kinds that pollinate 10 months out of the year. He doesn't get it because most kids with these types of allergies display different symptoms: runny noses, bronchial infections, itchy eyes, asthma, what you consider typical allergy suffering symptoms but not her she goes straight to hives and displays nothing else. Plus, this is sudden onset!

I told him, this is typical of my kid, she doesn't like to be ordinary. He laughed. She made him laugh a lot. He said if and when she breaks out in hives, cos she will because, lets face it, you can't avoid grass it's around, she should just take anti histamines. It isn't a "bad" allergy. We know this.

Her ant allergy, now this is a bad one and is life threatening. I don't know if he was trying to scare me or not. If he was it didn't work but he says it can kill her. Yes, I know this. He wants the shot therapy for her. All doctors do. We researched it, thoroughly and I don't. Her reaction to ant venom is very high it measures a 5 on a 1-5 scale. She is aware of this and is careful. We don't go anywhere without her epi-pen and she has only had a problem once. ONCE. She might never have an encounter again.

So weird kid of mine has developed more allergies. The cat one blew me away cos this summer when we went to GA jacob took them to see his aunt who is cat lady and has 20 cats and she didn't even scratch let alone break out in hives.
What gives kiddo?