Oral Food Challenge: Peanuts

If you've been reading our blog for a while or you know us personally, you know that Aurora has a severe peanut allergy.  We get through each day pretty safely because all the food we keep at our house is Aurora safe :)  We try our best to keep her safe but unfortunately we have had a couple of scary accidental exposures. Her last one was the day Talmage was blessed.  Darwin was quick to respond though and she didn't swallow any and didn't react.  We were all very grateful!

With Aurora starting kindergarten this year we knew we wanted to test her peanut allergy again to find out for sure where she's at with it.  She grew out of her dairy and egg allergy and we were hopeful that with her last accident exposure with no reaction that maybe she had grown out of her peanut allergy too!

So in July we met with an allergist who has a program they call Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) which is basically a treatment program that introduces the allergen to the patient in very small increments to start with and gradually increasing over time to the point that the patient eventually has no more reaction to it.

The doctor sent us in for a blood test.  This was Aurora's first time getting her blood drawn.  She was so brave when I took her in to get her arm poked.  She seriously did awesome!  And she was so proud of herself for not crying when she was getting her blood drawn.  We were super proud of her too.  Way to go, Aurora!

The results were in a few days later and came in at a 5 out of 100, which doesn't sound too bad but indicated that she was still allergic to peanuts.  The doctor suggested that we try her with an Oral Food Challenge because the number was low and she didn't react to her last accidental exposure.  We decided to go ahead and do it, although we were all pretty nervous about it.  We set the date and prepared to introduce Aurora to peanuts!  The night before the appointment Daddy gave Aurora and me blessings to help us feel better about it and to help calm our nerves.

On August 3rd we traveled up north for the appointment.  Nanny met us at the doctor's office so Savannah could play with her and Koda because she wasn't allowed to come with us.  Savannah was super excited to be able to play with Nanny and Koda all by herself!  They had lots of fun together that day.

We had to bring our own peanut butter for the food challenge and it was honestly really strange and a bit unnerving for me to be buying peanut butter after almost 5 years of not buying it.  The dose for the day was split up between about 10 different doses.  The plan was that if she didn't react to the dose she was given, the next dose would be increased and throughout the food challenge she would eventually get up to about 1/2 cup of peanut butter!

She was given the first dose and told she had to lick all of the peanut butter off the spoon.  It was a very small amount, and Aurora was so brave to do it!  We were so proud of how brave and strong she was during the food challenge!

Licking the spoon clean!

Proud of herself for taking the first dose, and feeling okay to start with.

But things went downhill very quickly and she started reacting very quickly to the first very small dose of peanut butter.  She started with some red hives around her mouth but the worst part for her was on the inside.  She said her throat hurt really bad and her tongue felt like it was going to explode :(  The nurses brought in 3 different medicines for her to drink to see if that would stop the reaction and then gave her a lolly-pop and told us to watch her close to see if she improved at all.  She was super miserable and felt very yucky for a while.

Our poor, miserable Aurora with hives around her mouth :(


When she still wasn't improving and her tongue was feeling worse the nurse practitioner decided it was time for an epi shot.  Aurora wasn't excited about getting a shot, but she was really brave and was feeling yucky enough that she didn't fight it.

With as quickly as she reacted to the peanuts she started feeling better just as quickly after she got the epi shot.  We were amazed at how quickly it worked!  It was really good for us all to see how quickly the epi shot worked for her.

The hives went away and her throat and tongue stopped hurting her.  She was feeling back to her normal, happy self in no time!


We had to wait at the doctor's office for about an hour+ after she got the epi shot so we could watch and make sure she didn't need another one.  Talmage was so sleepy!

At one point after getting the epi shot, Aurora had to use the restroom and Darwin and I couldn't help but laugh that she was skipping down the hallway after feeling so miserable just a little bit earlier.  The epi shot is truly amazing!

Although it was scary and disappointing to see that Aurora is truly still very allergic to peanuts I was grateful that we had this experience so that she, and we, could see how she reacts to peanuts.  She was only a year old when we discovered that she was severely allergic so she was too young to remember how she reacted the first time (I wish I had gotten pictures of how swollen her face got!) and she didn't really understand what would happen if she ate peanuts until we did this oral food challenge.  It was also really great for us to see how quick and effective the epipens are if we ever need to use it.  We always have it with us just in case, but fortunately we haven't had to use one on her at home or when we're out and about.

After this experience Aurora has been much better about asking if foods she's unfamiliar with have peanuts in them.  I'm grateful that she's realizing how important it is to ask because she didn't really understand the importance of asking before.  We've put Aurora on the wait list for the OIT but we'll have to wait about 18 months before we can even start the treatment.  We're willing to be patient :)