A visit to an allergist has left us a bit nuts

Friday was the day that Beckham finally was able to go in and see the allergist. He has been miserable over the past 2 months. Sneezing, wheezing, coughing, red eyes, runny noise...he has truly become our little walking disaster. He looks just like a complete mess.

The allergist scraped and poked his skin to get a diagnosis. This is not a pleasant experience for him or for Brodi who tried to calm him as the doctor worked him over. To make a long story short, he has an allergy. He has a nut allergy. Oh crap. What does this mean? Well, it means that anything that has any kind of nut in it is a BIG NO-NO for him. Serious enough that he we will always have to have an Epi-Pen with us which we would have to use if he ever has an allergic reaction. There are 4 allergies that can prove fatal if you are allergic: bee stings, nuts, shell fix, latex...so lucky us, Beckham has one of them.

So, this weekend we spent, as Brodi calls it, 'de-nutting' our house. Peanuts, gone. M&Ms, gone (if you check out the back of the packages, they may contain nuts which means, we can't have them around). Many things that you wouldn't think have nuts in them, do have nuts in them. I took out the big box of 'Grape Nuts' cereal, but funny enough, they don't have any nuts in them. Who woulda thunk that? Rest easy though, Pop Tarts are nut free. Yipee for all of us!

As Brodi and I talked about our two kids, we realized that they have had more than their share of health issues. Here is a quick rundown on both of them:

Carter, currently 5 years old

• Performed a near perfect swan dive off the couch and hit his face on the coffee table cutting open his face right below his eye: 4 stitches
• Pulled down an end table (shouldn't they secure those things with anchors or something) in church and bruised his entire face and bloodied his nose (picture on left)
  
• Had a fence gate swing back and clip him right below his eye: 4 stitches
• Nearly had the tip of his finger cut off by a closing door, lovingly shut by his brother Beckham: 11 stitches
• Broke his collar bone playing with his cousins (and yes, he lost that wrestling match): 1 broken collar bone
• Had a seizure at Disneyworld and spent the night in a hospital there, Celebration Hospital (which may be the coolest hospital name in the country).

Beckham, currently 2 years old

• Nut allergy
• Had RSV and spent two weeks in the hospital three weeks after he was born (cute picture at left)
  
• Has severe allergies in the spring (thanks to his hay fever allergic dad)
  
• May possibly have asthma (thanks to his lovely asthma stricken mom)
  
• Has already had strep throat several times in his short two years
• He has excema
  

Good times, but we can't complain much because these are things we can prevent and treat...we are very lucky to have these two cute little 'disasters.'