Outgrown!

I have been writing this post in my head for three years. Doodle has outgrown his peanut allergy. Totally. Gone. Over the course of four hours this morning, under medical supervision he ate 32 peanuts with absolutely no reaction. No hives, no swelling, no drop in blood pressure. Nada. He is one of the lucky, lucky, 20% of kids who outgrow this allergy.
He ( and me) were both scared but at 7:30am, wearing his superhero cape, he and Dolphin bravely ate the first of the tiny slivers of peanut. He coughed and I grabbed the Epi that was in my hand, in my pocket. Just a cough though, a reaction to the salt and new texture, false alarm. We waited. Then a quarter, then a half, then a whole nut. He proclaimed them good. Nurse Cheryl said in her unscientific opinion that was a good sign. We waited some more. Played bananagrams, watched movies, and waited. He and Daddy played legos and we waited. In the end he was up to a full serving of peanuts without blinking an eye.
There are as many theories about this as there are allergies. The plan we went with was absolute avoidance. No nuts of any kind, no product manufactured with nuts, nothing made in shared facilities or on shared production lines. After the initial reaction, not a smidgen of peanut protein while his gut and immune system continued to mature. It worked for us. But we did not do it alone. There are dozens of people who made decisions that contributed to his safety and ultimately to his outgrowing this. THANK YOU!~ Thank you to the friends who learned to cook and bake from scratch so that he could be included in birthdays, to the friends who read labels, called companies, harassed bakeries, mailed contraband safe Canadian chocolate, rigged portable mini freezers in the car so that we could bring home safe ice cream treats from BC, dropped off late night care packages of safer cookies ( also from Canada.....hmmm...), wiped down doorknobs and surfaces when the pest control company baited traps at school with peanut butter. Thank you to the fabulous parents at Lake Forest Park Co-op who made safe snacks the rule and not the exception. Thank you to the party guests that labeled food, that willingly washed their hands and brushed their teeth before eating in our home.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

We could not have done this without you.

We will still carry our Epi's until they expire. As Dr. Butler says " to wean the parents, not the kids!" But we are in the clear. We went out tonight to our favourite neighborhood Chinese restaurant to celebrate, a place that has been off limits for three years. It was delicious! We are adjusting to life PP ( post peanut) and I feel like a solid load of bricks has been removed from my shoulders. I feel bad writing that knowing that so many of my friends are still in the food allergy trenches. All I can really do is continue to advocate for better labels, more inclusive food free celebrations and more research. I will. I promise.