I am a smart gal, but I don't get it. I went in last Tuesday for my allergy appointment. The doctor did skin prick testing for milk, soy, and banana. Boy, was I nervous. My blood pressure was 155/72 ... it's normally 107/68.
The nurse came in, marked my arm, pricked it with the control solutions and the test allergens, and I waited. The histamine control reacted quite spectacularly, the other three were duds. Now, I am not surprised at the banana. That was weird from the outset, and I expected the symptoms to be correlated not causative. The other two, though, I just don't get.
How in the world can I have an intolerance to milk and soy given the immediacy and type of reaction. Forget about the duration of my milk symptoms. Part of those were probably due to the Adderall, and I expect that I am also lactose intolerant. I am a human adult after all. The soy reaction isn't a big deal, but the milk reaction scares me silly. The doc said that it is intolerance, no need to worry, and I can challenge at home if I want. Ok, .... I can't say that I like that answer.
Soy
Now soy isn't a big deal. I've logged coughing and itching. Saturday, given the doc's comments, I put a tablespoon or so of mayonnaise into my chicken salad. I love mayo and don't really cotton to mustard, so I said, "Yippee!" and went for it. I am not allergic, right? Maybe 10 minutes into my meal (I have the actual duration somewhere, but I don't want to look for it), I start hacking up a lung. Cough, cough, cough ... deep in my chest. This lasted for, I don't really know, thirty or forty minutes before I finally stopped. Now this is relatively mild, but it is also immediate. Food intolerance is supposed to be delayed. It's also supposed to be mostly gastrointestinal in nature. So what gives? I don't get it.
Milk
Now, my milk reaction has historically been much, much worse. Hence, I use the term scary. I am not going to test that until I have my significant other home to help monitor and reaction. Doc said not to worry, so he isn't. He didn't feel his throat closing up on him nor the feeling like he was going to pass out the last time I ate dairy. See, I worry.
What to do?
Well, I am still going to avoid, avoid, avoid. I don't quite believe the doctor's assurances. I am the one with the reaction, he isn't. Besides, the negative predictive value for a milk skin prick test is 94.8% according to one study; worse, according to others. That still leaves a 5% chance of an IgE-mediated allergy, and my symptoms are anaphylactic. Double blind placebo controlled challenges are the gold standard for a reason. I am not risk-taking girl. Maybe when my boys are out of college.
I think that I will do a soy challenge this week or next. I put together a time table and work my way through 1T, 1/8 cup, 1/4 cup, 1/2 cup, 1 cup of soy milk trials. I'll record the time of ingestion and any symptoms, including how long they last. I'll take the next dose, after I've had 30 minutes or more of recovery time. I'm thinking that I'll make a video of the symptoms with a time stamp also. Maybe I didn't describe what was happening well enough.
That will be my test-case. After I feel recovered, I'll go through the same procedure with milk. If all is well, I won't have mucus running in a stream out of my nose, wheezing and coughing so hard that I can't catch a breath, a throat that will cooperate with swallowing and talking, and the ability to stay awake long enough to take the video. If not, well then, maybe that doctor will be able to explain my reaction to me in a way that I better understand, because if this reaction isn't an allergic one, I'd sure as hell like to understand "intolerance" better.
Still, the right answer is to avoid it. Unfortunately, I can't always, and I still don't know what to do when I get accidentally exposed. His saying not to worry, doesn't help the matter in the slightest.
