A Little Background on Z's Life

Zack was born December 23, 2005 after what felt like a very long labor. In reality, it wasn't that long. But after being in the hospital 3 times for nonprogressing labor, it felt like I had been in labor the whole month. Labor went flawlessly. He popped out at 1:26pm on a rainy, lazy afternoon. There was, however, an unresolved issue to take care of. At 24 weeks pregnant, the ultrasound had found that Zack had enlarged kidneys. My ob/gyn told me that they would do an ultrasound on him after he was born as there was no treatment in utero. At a mere one day old, a sweet nurse led him away and promised to stay with him the whole time. We had no word at the time, but later found out his kidneys were mildly dilated and would stay that way for over a year.

Zack was diagnosed with hydronephrosis by the time he was 3-4 months old. Basically, his right kidney was mildly enlarged. At two months, he had a failed VCUG. The nurse couldn't manage to float a cath. She actually did more harm than good. We had to take him for an emergency peds Dr visit. After that Dr. T and the nephrologist agreed to a watch and see approach. He had periodic ultrasounds and thankfully the dilation stayed mild. At 13 months, he had yet another ultrasound with amazing results. No sign of dilated kidneys! He's to have a follow-up ultrasound and urinary analysis when he turns two.

Perhaps this was God's way of letting us off the hook for a different challenge. I feel that a preschooler and a toddler are enough of a challenge, but who am I to question the big guy?

On May 14, 2007 we got some news we really didn't want. Zack had allergy testing and was found to have milk, egg, and peanut allergies. A few months before, Zack had a flaming diaper rash. Just horrid. It coincided with a week in which he had several meals with egg as a distinguishable ingredient. He had waffles with egg and other foods with eggs as an minor ingredient, but this was really the first time he had actually pieces of egg by itself. We also noticed that the area around his mouth had gotten a rash while eating egg. We immediately cut back on egg and later gave him an egg challenge. We noticed that sometimes his face would get rashy and that whenever he had egg, he'd start developing a bad diaper rash. So we cut out the egg until we could get an appointment with our pediatrician. She recommended allergy testing and avoidance of egg and peanut. My husband's mother had recently been diagnosed with a peanut allergy as well. She also wrote us a script for an Epi Pen Junior. That is one scary monster of a needle!

After about three weeks, our appointment with the allergist finally rolled around. They did the "scratch" test and egg came up immediately, followed up a bit more slowly by milk and peanut. We were given another script for the EPJr which will be helpful since I'm going to have to have a few strategically placed, just in case they are needed. My purse, the house, Grandma Luci's house. Reading labels will be my new hobby. He will be retested in a year and I pray that they will be gone. I know that's wishful thinking as peanut allergies are for life. It would be enough if we could just get the egg and milk back into our lives.

Now we sit, day five into the journey of a milk, egg and peanut free life. And what a journey it's starting to be.