Jonathan Update Day 2

Today I called Jonathan's allergist, Dr. Quintero, right away when the office opened to see if there was an appointment available.  Luckily, there was a cancellation today so we had an appointment at 1:30 pm.  Before the appointment we ran some errands: picking up prescriptions, go to Huntsville and drop off library books, pick up my paycheck at church, and get retested to check that my infection was gone.

After running around for about 2 hours, we grabbed some quick lunch and went to his allergist.  Dr. Quintero asked a bunch of questions to really understand what happened.  He believes that Jonathan's reaction was not the fault of his allergy shot.  Jonathan got his routine allergy shot on that Wednesday morning at 8 am.  Since the reaction was over 8 hours after his shot Dr. Quintero was very sure that it was not the shot's fault (as I had predicted).  He believes that it is probably an environmental allergy.  Jonathan was tested for these allergy with skin testing a year ago.

The plan of action that Dr. Quintero put in place is to retest Jonathan for some more environmental allergies and add some more.  He is also going to include the extensive food allergy testing as well.  In total, he will be getting over 100 skin pricks in one afternoon.  We are going in for this testing on Tuesday; this means that he will have to be off of his antihistamines for 5 days (Friday-Tuesday).  He will be substituting his antihistamines for a tapered dose of Prednisone steroids.  He can't be on antihistamines because it will skew the results of the allergy testing.  He will then have a follow-up appointment the next day to review the results of the skin testing with Dr. Quintero to help find some answers.

Dr. Quintero advised us that even though we don't have answers now that we will hopefully get closer to answers after the skin testing.  He said that it's a puzzle that we are going to need a little bit of time to figure out.  I'm taking his advise and not getting frustrated or angry with the process; Jonathan and I both know that this will take some time to figure out.  We can't worry about what we don't know yet, that's our motto!

Overall today, Jonathan has felt better.  This afternoon he said he felt his heart really racing and lots of mucus going down his throat and into his lungs.  I told him it was probably because of all the antihistamines he was given in the hospital and that he took today, and the heart racing was probably related to the Prednisone steroid as it amps up the body's metabolism.  Other than that he hasn't had any breathing problems or throat issues.  He did call his boss and he is going to take off from work Friday because his body is just wiped from all the trauma and we both didn't sleep well last night.

Thank you to our families and friends that have been supporting us with love and prayers.  Prayers would still be appreciated over the next couple of days for no attacks since he will be off his normal meds for skin testing, and for patience with the process, and for our emotions....we have both had some scary moments these past two weeks which is a lot for the body to take.  But, we keep trusting in God which holds us together.

Look for another update Tuesday and Wednesday on testing and results....and hopefully ANSWERS!!