at the end of the day it is still parental choice to have a epi pen. once you have one you have to accept that your life, and that of your childs will change dramtically.
and sometimes when children are young, some parents consider that they can control the situation and reconsider when child is younger.
its often hard to understand this if you are a parent who has had to jump up and down to get a epi pen, as we were .... but for some this works very well when child is younger.
the parents that go down this route often have one main food allergy, and avoid the repeated reactions to that one food.
personally, i wouldnt choose to have a food challenge with such positive skin prick results, as its well known that peanut spt has been proved to be consistant positive, unlike other food spt.
and of course , proof that he was highly allergic was shown in the first step of the challenge process. Sometimes such results give confimation of the allergy, and underlay the current avoidance plan a parent has....
btw
have heard that some gps ask if they can stop prescribing epi pens due to lack of use........which is very wrong medical judgement!
each immunologist varies,( as we have found out) on their own picture of your child, so asking for other doctors opinon should be ( and is for complicated cases) standard practice in a large allergy clinic. but we dont have that many of them around the country!
anyway, the issue of epi pens should, rightly or wrongly depend on the parents final say.
Interesting, ingouls that your doc advised to avoid tree nuts, when we have been asked to GIVE them to our no longer tree nut allergic son, which we do, but only seasonal due to non availalbity of tree nuts with shells on.