one step back

A week or so ago I started writing a triumphant post about how our allergy problems seemed to be getting better. I have tentatively eaten wheat and soy fairly regularly in the last month, with only minimal problems. I didn't think we were out of the woods yet, but I was happy to report that I could see the light shimmering through the branches.
I haven't finished the post. Which is good because I'd have to put a huge asterisk after basically every sentence.

Last Sunday, Lucy was playing happily in the kitchen when Dyami noticed she had a red patch on her face.
"Did she scratch herself?" he asked.
I stooped down. It did look remarkably like scratches--sort of like she'd rubbed up against sandpaper.
She didn't seem to be unhappy or in pain at all, so I went back to what I was doing.
A minute later, I looked down. The red patch no longer looked like scratches--the white spaces had filled in with pink.
"She's got something in her mouth," said Dyami, his tone slightly more worried.
I did an exploratory swipe and extracted two miniscule white pieces of something. With mama aplomb, I popped them into my mouth and tasted.
Nuts. Probably almonds.
"Oh, crap," I said.
Now the red patch had extended to the side of her nose.
"Are we going to be taking her to the emergency room?" Dyami asked.
I picked Lucy up and took off her shirt to check for other hives. All clear.
"We should just wait," I said. "It doesn't look that swift, though. If she starts wheezing, we'll worry."
"Maybe now is a good time to go over our emergency plan," he said.
For the next hour or so we watched Lucy, on tenterhooks.
Thank God the patch just faded to nothing. Today I noticed some very faint dark scab-ish lines where the patch was.

So now we know she has some sort of sensitivity or allergy to nuts, probably almonds. An allergy that involves red skin reactions, and occurs only with touch. Perhaps she rubbed the nuts on her face, or scratched her skin after picking up the nuts. Or maybe she swallowed a tiny bit. Who knows?
Oh, Joy! I had been kind of glad not to be dealing with truly scary allergies that potentially involved hospital visits. Argh.

But the final kicker was when I was talking to Hack Mommy about it. Her kids have a wide assortment of allergies and associated reactions ranging from vomiting to hives. It makes life at her house fun and interesting!
"You probably shouldn't eat nuts while you're nursing," she said.
I stopped, looked at her, and cursed.
Because the last thing I wanted was to eliminate more ingredients, especially when almonds form a large part of my diet. Plus, I'm slightly hypoglycemic, so any kind of protein is very important to me. I can't have milk or soy, so we use almond milk. I use almond butter instead of peanut butter, and mix it into smoothies. I use ground almonds, and love pesto made with walnuts. My favorite granola is the "super nutty" variety. Almond butter on bananas was one of my favorite quick snacks.
Today I bought rice milk. I hate rice milk. I even hesitate to get the "multigrain" kind because of the wheat.

So, I've decided:
I never really liked Hack Mommy very much.
I like allergies even less.
If anyone has some second opinions that would prove Melissa horribly wrong and misguided, it would be super-appreciated right now. Because Lord knows, I don't respect her knowledge in other areas.
Argh.