Plugging Along . . .

This week has been good. Baby E hasn't gotten above a level orange all week. She's still having worrisome symptoms, but at least she's not miserable. She's having lots of happy moments and things have been relatively peaceful.

Last night we went to a gathering at a friend's house, to see some mutual friends who are home on furlough. My friend JT was the most thoughtful and considerate hostess ever. She made sure to vacuum really well in the room the kids would be playing in, and then told everyone to be sure not to bring any food into that room.

####################

We brought safe food for Baby E and me, and DH and I took turns keeping track of Baby E while everyone was eating, to make sure she didn't get any crumbs on her hands or in her mouth. JT even talked to everyone about washing their hands after eating before touching Baby E. It worked really well.

All three of our kids had a marvelous time, and Baby E didn't end up with any reactions. In fact, she was in the best mood during and after the party than she had been all day. I'm glad the outing was a success--maybe a few experiences like that will make leaving the house a little less stressful.

The biggest thing I'm struggling with this week is adjusting to the idea of cutting out another major food that's found in almost everything. I haven't even started researching it much yet, other than reading ingredient labels. I expect the list of products and ingredients that can be coconut-derived rivals the soy list, and perhaps even comes close to the corn list. I know all those sodium laurel/laureth sulfate-type ingredients in cleaning products, soaps and cosmetics are often coconut-derived.

It doesn't make sense, I know, but at this point I almost feel that I don't want to know. I find myself fluctuating between denial and despair if I think about it, so I've been trying to just not think about it. That doesn't make a lot of sense, I know--especially since I still feel like I'm having a fairly constant low-grade allergic reaction going on. Of course, with the number of known environmental allergies I have it's difficult to poinpoint a specific trigger.

I can't be sure, but it seems that my itchiness and other symptoms get worse every time I wash my hands. The soap, of course, has coconut derivatives. If I rub my eyes they itch and burn. So for now I'm just trying to use the soap as little as possible and rinse very well afterwards.

If I start having more really obvious and scary reactions to things with coconut derivatives, then I'll have to take it more seriously.

Meanwhile, I haven't washed my hair since I discovered the coconut allergy, because my scalp still itches and burns and all the shampoos in the house seem to have coconut derivatives in them. I had noticed quite some time ago that my shampoo was making my scalp itch, though I hadn't figured out why. Ever since I had constant eczema on my scalp as a child (until we cut out milk), my head seems to be the first place dermatological allergic reactions show up. I'm going to have to find some solution for that today, even if it just means rubbing baking soda and lemon juice in my hair and then rinsing it out.

Unfortunately, the fact that I had an anaphylactic reaction to coconut oil, which is likely to have extremely low levels of the allergenic proteins (although there are cases in the medical literature of anaphylactic reactions to coconut oil), probably means the sensitivity level is pretty extreme. Dermatological reactions to coconut derivatives in soaps, etc are actually much more common than reactions to ingesting coconut.

I wish I had an allergist I could trust to give some guidance about it. I think I'll make some phone calls about that today.

It's also becoming more urgent to see a nutritionist, I think, and figure out a plan for what we can eat that will meet our nutritional needs while being safe. However, since we still don't know for sure whether Baby E is going to be able to eat gluten or not, or if there are more allergies we haven't yet pinpointed, we don't really have all the information we need to make such a consultation effective.