Yay, nuts!

On July 29, 2024July 29, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn ParentingLeave a comment

It’s official: as of today, my son is no longer allergic to tree nuts or coconuts. Peanuts, unfortunately, are still on the no-go list, and are likely to remain there for the rest of his life, but he’s gone from a kid with a laundry list of allergies as a baby to just peanuts as a nearly-teenager and, even better, he’s managed to do it without ever having any reactions to anything stronger than a mild rash. Every other person I know with a peanut allergy has had to reach for an epipen at least once.

I probably have a similar post back in the archives from the Egg Challenge and the Strawberry Challenge, but the way this works is that they do a skin test first. He passed the skin test for everything but peanuts. So they pick one tree nut– apparently the allergen is common to all of them so it doesn’t really matter what kind you get– and they bring you into the doctor’s office, and they feed you a tiny sliver of the thing, then wait half an hour, then a little more, then half an hour, then a little more, then half an hour, and then a nice mouthful and this time they wait an hour. It takes forever and most of it is spent sitting around hoping to continue to be bored, because if something interesting happens it will be something terrible.

I forgot to bring a book, so I spent the whole morning holding forth on BlueSky. You should join me over there!

Also, speaking of joining me, I’m two minutes away from the White Dudes for Harris kickoff. Are you a white dude? Come on over. I don’t really plan on being there for much more than half an hour or so– from the list of Names they’re expecting, this is going to go on for hours, and I don’t have the stamina– but I’ll show up at the start and donate money again to pump up the numbers.

Tomorrow, Deadpool & Wolverine. For reals this time.

Speaking of tests

On August 2, 2018August 2, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting4 Comments

The boy had a Complicated Medical Procedure this morning, beginning at 8:15 in the AM and lasting for just over four hours, where they put me and him in a small room together with only an iPad, my phone, and a novel for company and periodically came in to feed him bits of strawberry and make him take his shirt off.

The good news: apparently my son is no longer allergic to strawberries. The bad news: I feel like the day is completely shot (who knew sitting around for four hours could be so exhausting?) and he’s demanding strawberry-flavored everything right now. I will have to go out and buy ice cream tonight.

(A week from now, he’ll be insisting he hates strawberries and always has, because that’s how he rolls. Nine days from now, he’ll want them again. Last night he insisted out of nowhere that he’s never liked green grapes. Motherfucker we could seed a vineyard with all of the grapes you’ve eaten around here.)

So. Yeah. That’s going on. Lots of cleaning to do before the wife gets home on Saturday morning and I’m out of the house almost all day tomorrow, so I probably ought to get to work.

Challenge met!

On December 30, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting1 Comment

Did my typical pre-post GIS for “scrambled eggs” and that image came up. Can you tell those are supposed to be scrambled eggs? Because I’m not sure I can.

You may recall the Baked Egg Challenge, where my son was forced by his doctor to eat cupcakes in steadily increasing amounts until she became convinced that the eggs contained within the cupcake mix were not going to cause him anaphylaxis or death. At the time I thought it would be six months until the Scrambled Egg Challenge; it turned out to be just over a year. We were at the doctor’s from 8:00 AM until after one, feeding the boy steadily increasing amounts of premade, reheated scrambled eggs, which sounds kinda gross to me but he wolfed them down.

It turns out that eggs will not kill him. We were cautioned to avoid things with runny yolks for a bit longer, but it ain’t difficult to avoid fried eggs and I’ll be damned if I’m poaching him anything so we ought to be okay.

In other news, the cat yanked me out of a sound sleep at 2:30 in the morning by puking on my bed, and it’s been close to a week since I had more than three hours or so of sleep at a time, because I absolutely can not get a full night’s sleep in December apparently. So I was a zombie through the entire Challenge and I’m not much better now.

End of year book saleswanking tomorrow. I will try and get one more post up today and actually be a little bit entertaining.

Just to make sure we’re clear

On August 10, 2015August 9, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Music4 Comments

If I am ever with you, and I tell you I can’t feel my face, it’s not because you’re emotionally important to me, it’s because I’m either having a stroke or a severe allergic reaction and you should call an ambulance immediately. If I tell you I love it, report to the 911 dispatcher that I’m having an inappropriate euphoric reaction to trauma as well.

Seriously.

Kids these days.

In which that went well

On December 12, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting8 Comments

So the boy has passed the Baked Egg Challenge, with nary a swelling nor a rash anywhere in sight. He got three cupcakes, doled out in increasing doses, spread out over about a three hour period.

The doctor has now told us that we are to make sure our son ingests approximately a quarter of a cup of baked egg product a day for the next six months, at which point we move on to the Adjectiveless Egg Challenge, which I suspect he will be less enthusiastic about.

What this means is that my son has quite literally been put on a cupcake diet by his doctor. For six months.

I’m not sure how to feel about that.

In which tomorrow will be obnoxious

On December 11, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting5 Comments

(Note: Song choice does not indicate my mood or the quality of my day.)

I have an annoying thing to do tomorrow. Have I talked about this yet? I hope not. My son has an egg allergy. And apparently, with little kids, egg allergies are a thing that frequently just goes away as the child ages. We are doing a thing called the Baked Egg Challenge with him tomorrow at the doctor’s office. (Hospital? Maybe it’s at the hospital.)

Here is what the Baked Egg Challenge is: tonight, my wife will make precisely 24 cupcakes using a commercial cupcake mix. She will, however, alter the recipe by using precisely three eggs. Tomorrow we will take precisely four of those precisely twenty-four cupcakes (which, by the way, are to remain un-iced) and take them to the doctor’s office with us. Or maybe to the hospital. My son will eat two of the four cupcakes; the other cupcakes are either for the doctors to analyze to make sure we really put eggs in them like we said we would or they are a tax for the nurses; I’m not sure.

If you feel like I overused the word “precisely” in that paragraph, it’s because that’s how the instructions worked. They’re really concerned that we might accidentally make 25 cupcakes or bring six of them with us. I want to know what to do with the extras. I require instructions!

We will then watch him for four hours, and hope he doesn’t die. If he starts to die there will be nurses right there with epinephrine and so he will quickly stop doing that. I’m picturing a situation where every time the kid has a cough we freak out, and where every time we see a teeny little blotch on his skin we start debating whether he’s breaking out or whether that’s just because it’s hot in the room we’re waiting in. Was that little bump there when we got here? WHO KNOWS.

(Simple fact is, there’s no way that the kid hasn’t eaten some sort of baked good somewhere that had some eggs in it, and he’s never had an alarming allergic reaction to anything anywhere. If he does have an allergic reaction, we’re literally in the best place in town for that to happen, and he’ll be fine. It’s not going to be scary, precisely, but it’s going to be nerve-wracking.)

(Spends five minutes researching “nerve-wracking” vs. “nerve-racking,” discovers the Internet has decided they are functionally identical.)

Anyway, I may or may not be especially active around here tomorrow, especially if the boy’s not feeling well when we get back from the doctor’s. I am trying to write a piece about something that happened at work yesterday, but it’s challenging. I’m not writing it if I can’t make it funny, and to write it– there is no way around this– I need to use the word rape about 45 times. So… yeah. It’s gonna be a dilly of a pickle, is what I’m saying.

Well that was unexpected

On September 4, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Not only did the Benadryl put me in bed, dead asleep, at something like eight thirty last night, but I had to stay home today. I woke up at six like usual, rolled over, stood up, every muscle in my body screamed at once, and I clawed through fifteen feet of cotton to get to the bathroom. I’ve taken multiple Vicodin and not woken up that fucked up before.

Then I went back to bed and slept until, like, now. I managed to shower at some point; I don’t actually remember doing it.

Starting to wonder if that package had been messed with somehow. I’m doing this fun thing where I’m not actually congested as I usually understand the term but I’m having to breathe on purpose. Which is fun.

The third paragraph is the important one.

On September 3, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

So, spent the day staring at spreadsheets and a huge pile of disorganized incredibly poorly-photocopied documents attempting to make everything on the spreadsheet agree with everything in the documents. It didn’t, but it’s about 60 grand closer than it was this morning. Also, my eyes are bleeding.