More testing

Today we went in for more allergy testing. We are pretty sure we have figured out what is causing her to have diarrhea for oh so very long.  Through lots of allergy testing, trial and error and eliminating certain foods I am pretty confident that she has an allergy to yeast.

Ya weird, right?

She can have bread (without yeast - think fruit breads), tortillas and certain crackers/snacks without any bakers yeast and not have problems. But if she does have something with yeast in it (pizza crust, bread, rolls etc) within 24-36 hrs she has diarrhea.

From doing biopsies of her colon, stomach and esophagus, as well as numerous stool samples they have found evidence of allergens in her colon.  Pin pointing exactly what is causing it, is hard! Luckily we have found some great doctors who don't think I am crazy (though at times I still second guess myself) and are helping us try and figure out answers.

So after doing a quick 15 min scratch test for yeast and having a small positive reaction the allergist decided he wanted to do an allergy past test.  Which looks like this:



Basically it is where you have the allergen (in this case yeast) sit on your skin for a few days. Then you remove it, take pictures and access the reaction.  Now to make sure that she actually had a true positive test and not a false positive from the 15 min test, he is having everyone in the family - excluding Andrew - wear this contraption for the next few days.  We can't take baths but can wash our hair in the sink. We can't do super physical activity - basically try not to sweat -, and don't itch it or rub it.

 Now this test is not cheap.  Most insurances don't cover it or only cover a minimal amount of this test.  In our case, the insurance is not covering a cent.  So the allergist said he would cover it - what a blessing!  We would only need to pay an office visit charge.  He is just as intrigued and interested in finding out what's going on as we are.  And, he said, if she does show a positive reaction and we are all negative, he wants to do further testing and write up this whole experience in a journal.  Imagine that, us helping science and possibly helping another family going through something similar.

Hopefully us bing Guinea Pigs for science will pay off.  We will figure out an answer and I won't look so crazy.  I still have this fear that there will be no reaction,  I will look nuts (even though all the doctors know from all of the tests we have done that there is some sort of delayed allergy going on with this little girl) and we will be back to square one.  What will get me though is if there is no reaction that what is it? And why is there so much of an improvement since taking her off yeast?