Adventures of an Allergist Mommy

Thanks to the Mothers of Children Having Allergies group for passing on the important information below! ----------------------------------------------------- With the generous support of the Food Allergy Initiative-Chicago there is now a food allergy-specific learning opportunity for school nurses on-line:   http://cmhdotnet.webitects. com/ce/online/article.aspx? articleID=238   When completed the participant will receive 0.5 INA contact hour for continuing education.     Please share this information with your favorite school nurse.  :-)   --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this era of budget cuts and staffing shortages in our schools (especially when it comes to nurses), how wonderful to have easily accessible resources for our school nurses to educate themselves (and earn continuing education credit, to boot) on how to keep children safe! Bravo to the Food Allergy Initiative!...

I'm waiting for my flight home from the 2011 AAAAI Annual Meeting (delayed, naturally). It was a wonderful and educational conference, but I am ready to go home. I miss my boys. The time difference made it difficult to connect via phone- I was always calling during naptime, mealtime or mid-car ride to some really unhealthy restaurant meal with DH. During the one call where I was actually able to speak with them, all I could make out was "Mommy, guess what?" and the rest was garbled. Sigh. At the airport, there are adorable children everywhere. I know this is an impossibility, because children can only be annoying at airports (last trip, Son #2 actually ran OUT OF THE AIRPORT while we were checking our bags), but as I am not the mother, they are adorable to me. When I hear a toddler call out, "Mommy!", the reaction is visceral- my throat chokes and my eyes get watery. Similar to hearing a baby's cry when separated from your newborn. What is this connect...

I am in San Francisco, California for the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. It promises to be a very educational and intellectually satisfying meeting. Last year, I tried my hand at live-tweeting from the conference. I'll be doing the same this year- hopefully, it will give folks at home an opportunity to take part in the knowledge sharing remotely. The exercise is mutually beneficial- in addition to sharing information with others, my tweets will obviate the need for any paper-based note-taking on my part! It really highlights the "green appeal" of social media- so many trees saved! I will not be alone in this endeavor- my expectation is that we'll see a substantial increase in the number of tweets coming out from the conference compared to 2010. If you'd like to partake in the knowledge-fest, please subscribe to hashtag #AAAAI on Twitter to get a live stream of tweets from the meeting!

Many thanks to Illinois House Representatives Chris Nybo (R) and John D'Amico (D)  for sponsoring HB3294, the School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act, on 02/24/2011. Click here for details regarding this bill: http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=3294&GAID=11&DocTypeID=HB&LegId=60664&SessionID=84&GA=97 Synopsis: " Provides that the purpose of the Act is to allow schools to have access to life-saving emergency epinephrine auto-injectors if and when a student has an anaphylaxis reaction and to allow the school to have personnel trained to administer an emergency epinephrine auto-injector. Provides that a school district may provide emergency epinephrine auto-injectors to trained personnel, and trained personnel may utilize those epinephrine auto-injectors to provide emergency medical. Provides that each public and private elementary and secondary school in the State may make emergency epinephrine auto-injectors and trained p...

Clinician. Diagnostician. Prognostician. Healer. A physician has many jobs to perform, all critical to the appropriate management of what ails our patients. Without astute physical exam skills or a keen ability to sort through a medical history to uncover salient data, the physician is no better at diagnosing a patient than a Google search (and we're quite a lot better, in case anyone was wondering). Without a proper understanding of physiology and pharmacology, the physician is no better at healing than a placebo, and might actually do harm! As patients, we rightfully base our assessments of our physicians' competence on their ability to (as quickly and non-invasively as possible) determine what's wrong, and what to do about it. Unfortunately, we have also come to view physicians as the barrier to care, rather than the source of care. Who stands between the sick patient and the antibiotic? Whose signature is required before the blood test can be performed? The fundam...

Horrible, isn't it? I feel no guilt whatsoever about the following dishonest charade... Setting: Trusty Honda Civic, en route to a casual dinner out with the family. Son #1: I want to go to Red Lobster! Son #2: Red Lobster! Red Lobster! DH: (whispering to me) Not tonight. I'll spend the whole time shelling crab legs for him. I just want a relaxing meal. Allergist Mommy: Okay, kiddo. Let me call the restaurant... (fake dials phone, lifts to ear) "Hello, Red Lobster? Do you have a table for 4? Yes, for tonight. Oh, really? Well, how soon will a table be open? 11pm?!?! No no, that's too late. Maybe some other time. Thank you. bye." Honey, they are too full right now. How about Mexican? Son #1: Okay, Mommy. I like their chips! DH: Awesome. This trick will only work for another couple of years. Until then, I intend to milk it dry.

For nearly a century, doctors have known that the best way to control environmental allergy symptoms is by retraining your immune system to tolerate substances that you are currently over-reacting to. This is known as “immunotherapy”.   Until recently, immunotherapy required multiple small injections over a period of time (subcutaneous immunotherapy). Although allergy injection treatment is very safe and effective, weekly trips to the doctor for shots are not always convenient for today’s busy families. This means that many patients are not able to take advantage of allergen immunotherapy’s numerous health benefits, such as decreased need for medications, improved hay fever and asthma control, prevention of asthma in high-risk children, and a better night’s sleep. Sublingual immunotherapy, or allergy drops, can offer the benefits of immunotherapy to a wider array of patients. These drops are made from the same FDA-approved allergen extracts used in allergy injection treatme...