WAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
I am so sad about this development. I am not angry at anything or anybody, but it's just sad to think that Grace won't have a peanut butter & jelly sandwich or ants on a log (celery with peanut butter and raisins). Plus peanut butter is just damn yummy.
The allergist suggested that we take all peanut products out of the house. I think Kurt and I will have to have our little stash of peanut butter in one of the top cupboards so we can have a little peanutty goodness late at night after Gracie goes to bed.
But everything else, yeah... gone.
Grace was SO GOOD at the allergist appointment. The doctor sort of thought it was peanuts she was allergic to, but wasn't willing to make a formal diagnosis until the scratch test. The nurse poked Gracie in the back with 20 different allergens, and sure enough, peanuts caused a ginormous reaction. So that's that.
Then we were sent upstairs to the lab in order to have her blood drawn to determine the levels of antibodies in her blood. Grace has never had blood drawn since she was a newborn, so I wasn't sure how she was going to handle it. I sat in the blood-drawing chair with her on my lap and immobilized both arms with my hands. The nurse inserted the needle, and poor Grace's vein saw the needle coming and decided to jump to the left. She's just like her momma. But after a bit of wiggling, the nurse got a full vial of blood without any problems, and Grace was such a trooper throughout the whole thing. Not even a whimper!!
You should see Grace at the doctor's. You'd think it was all old hat to her the way she behaves, although the only times she's really been to the doctor's is for her regular checkups. She sits stock-still as the doctor is examining her with such a serious expression on her little face. She sits and breathes gently while he listens to her chest, and allows him to shine the light in her nose and ears without any protest. It's like she knows the doctor won't hurt her, but needs to do some weird things to make sure she's doing okay.
What a good baby. ;o)
I was so glad I rescheduled the appointment for 9:50am. The 2pm appointment was never going to work! I arrived at the hospital about fifteen minutes early, but wasted ten minutes trying to figure out where I was. The first entrance I approached had a sign on the door saying it was only the entrance to the birthing center, and if I wanted to get into the hospital proper, I'd have to head towards another entrance. I figured I'd just try to walk to another entrance, only it was physically impossible. Finally I threw Gracie back into her car seat and drove halfway around the hospital before I saw the tiny sign to the children's center.
Once I got there, of course there was a ton of paperwork to fill out. But then the nurse put us in an exam room where we then had to wait till 10:45am before the doctor even saw us. By the time the scratch test was over and we'd gone to the lab to have Grace's blood drawn, it was nearly 12:30pm. So it was a very good thing we rescheduled the apppointment, else we would never have made it to the Navy Ball!
Which, by the way, was a blast!! I thought we were going to be late because of all the fog causing a bad ferry backup, but nothing really got going till well after 6pm anyhow. We sat a table full of other engineers, so Kurt had plenty of people to talk to. I even knew a couple of the wives.
The dancing was the best part, of course. Instead of hiring a dj, the organizers were able to find a band made up of Navy personnel, and they were awesome! Unfortunately the keynote speakers during the dinner tended to ramble on, so there wasn't as much time to dance as I would have liked, but we still managed to do the Electric Slide and get our boogie on.
Aren't we beautiful??
