Our last allergy update...for now

On Tuesday we went to the allergist and Nathan had a patch test placed on his back (he also had a scratch test done for peanuts, they forgot it last time).  He has learned to hate the doctor's office and cried almost the entire time we were there. 

We had to leave the patches on his back for 48 hours.  They tested for milk, peanuts, rice, wheat, and soy (he already tested positive for eggs last month so they couldn't do that again).  He did really well having the patches on- he didn't try to scratch them or take them off.  The only problem was that they forgot to give us the adhesive remover, so after about 45 minutes of Nathan screaming in pain and me sobbing we finally got all the patches off last night.

if you look closely you can see how the patches ripped off some of his skin...let's just say it was a really, really rough night last night

We went in this morning to have the patches read by the allergist.  She determined that he had a positive reaction to milk and rice, and a slightly positive reaction to soy.  So we're supposed to be avoiding milk, eggs, rice, and soy.  The soy wasn't too positive, so she said that we probably don't have to get too crazy with avoiding soy, just things that are "bulk soy" (tofu, soy milk...).
We'll see how this works for us now; Nathan loves rice- this was definitely something we weren't expecting, a rice allergy is extremely rare here in the US...they usually only see it in Asian countries so the allergist and dietitian were both shocked- our dietitian had actually never seen anyone with a rice allergy (besides those crazy people who are allergic to everything).
This will mean a few more changes to our meal planning, learning how to use some new milk substitutes (that aren't rice milk and soy milk) as well as taking away Nathan beloved rice and tofutti "cream cheese"...he just gobbles that stuff up.