DS has sesame challenge tomorrow - feeling nervous

[piglet75]

Bit of background.... DS is 4.9yrs old. Between 6 months & 18 months he ate hoummous a few times & come up red & blotchy afterwards. Being already allergic to egg & dairy his consultant did a rast test on him which came back positive (0.47 out of total IgE of 17). Just before his second birthday he had what I felt at the time was quite a significant reaction after accidentally eating a snack containing sesame seeds. His reaction was a cough & his lips seemed a bit swollen & I think he also had a bit of a red flush.

Since then we have strictly avoided sesame & much to my surprise about 9 months after the last reaction at his next appointment, he skin prick tested negative to sesame. I was convinced this was a false negative but his RAST result then came back negative too. The results came back the same the following year too. His consultant has therefore recommended a sesame challenge which is booked for tomorrow.

I know the skin prick to sesame isn't the most reliable and the IgE levels can falsely slip into negative so I am feeling really apprehensive about tomorrow but I want to have my nerves under control for DS's sake.

Has anyone got any words of wisdom for getting in the right frame of mind for a challenge (somehow I wasn't nearly as nervous about the egg & dairy challenges he had to do) & also any experiences with sesame challenges (passes & fails)? I have no idea where to set my expectations.

[nettie]

Haven't got as far as sesame challenge with ds2 but our allergy clinic now test with tahini if a traditional skin prick test comes back negative, because of the unreliability of he skin prick test. Ds2 got a negative on hirps recent test, but had big skin reaction to the tahini.

Sorry I know this doesn't help you for tomorrow. Just remember they will stop the test at the slightest reaction, ds2 first egg challenge was stopped as soon as he said he felt sick and looked a bit pale.

You'll be fine

[Jemstone]

Hi my ds didn't pass his sesame challenge. My advice would be don't let your oh give anti histamine the night before and not tell you in case you got mad! It makes his symptoms so he was getting very agitated (and nasty) but no other obvious symptoms. Finally stopped the challenge when he got hives around his eyes but then they wouldn't go down for hours.

Be prepared for a long boring day. They wanted to use tahini for the challenge but he refused to eat it so ended up using sesame snaps.

Good luck with it. My allergy clinic also use tahini for the skin prick test. He has never reacted to the sesame they use but the tahini did cause a welt

[nettie]

Hope everything went well and your day wasn't too long and boring!