Ah, Allergists...

Pig Jr.'s allergist is trying to drive me loopy. I do not think it is intentional, although you never know. What I do know for sure is that she seems to have changed her mind when it comes to the correlation between my son's allergies, breathing issues, and his sensory issues.

A few months back, when we had Pig Jr. tested for allergies for the first time, his allergist smiled patronizingly at me when I asked if she would be testing him for food allergies for foods he outright rejects. I explained that with his sensory issues, I could barely get him to eat a few different foods. Most of what was presented to him five, ten, twenty, fifty times or more would not even be touched by Pig Jr.'s fingers, let alone find their way into his mouth. I expressed my concern that he might be allergic to those foods and he had no other way of telling me that something did not seem right about them. Without coming out and directly informing me that I was wrong, she scoffed at the notion that his sensory issues would have anything to do with food allergies. In fact, she refused to even test him on foods he had rejected without eating.

Now, I have numerous food allergies. I also have sensory issues, although thankfully not quite as severe as my son does. There have been times in my life when I have outright rejected certain foods without attempting to eat even one tiny bite only to find out later that there was indeed something in them to which I was allergic. I have read countless books about sensory issues, and many of them do point out that sensory issues and other immunological issues often go hand in hand. In other words, I was already aware that there can be a correlation between allergies and sensory issues. I am living that life. I was trying to determine if my son was, too, but his allergist was having none of that.

We saw the same allergist today. She made a comment about how well his breathing was doing, and then asked about his sensory issues. Suddenly, she was trying to educate me about how often she sees that her pediatric patients who have sensory issues often have food allergies. She explained how she might see a nine-year-old who never ate peanut butter and the parents just thought he was picky and it turned out to be an allergy. Somehow, people with sensory issues can pick up on the allergic potential for a food and just reject it entirely. There appears to be a correlation between sensory issues and allergies. Really? You think? Say it ain't so!

In the course of just three months this year, Pig Jr.'s allergist went from not wanting to test my son for food allergies to trying to convince me that testing needed to be done.

Now, Pig Jr. is still on his allergy medicines, so testing was not possible today. His allergist did note that he had what looked like signs of eczema in the folds of his ears, which is one of those possible signs of chronic allergies. She is suddenly taking his allergies more seriously and comparing notes about kidlets with sensory issues. I have no idea what prompted her change of heart, but I am quite happy about it. Maybe now I can finally get some answers about why Pig Jr. does not eat much of anything.