Ask About My Peanut Allergy

Peanut Safe Fun in CA: Disneyland, Legoland & San Diego

Bo completed his great California adventure in early June and we wanted to provide an update on how his ongoing peanut allergy desensitization treatment made such a difference on this vacation.

But first a quick update on Bo's daily peanut allergy treatment at Arkansas Children's Hospital. Bo, is still eating 34 peanut butter M&Ms every day as his daily peanut desensitization dosage. He has adjusted well from the peanut flour routine and actually likes the taste of peanut butter M&Ms now, though he would prefer not to have to eat so many at one sitting.

If your new to Bo's peanut allergy treatment blog please be sure to read About Us.

San Diego, LEGOLAND, Disneyland, Oh My!

We started out in San Diego staying at the beautiful Hilton San Diego Resort & Spa on Mission Bay. This hotel is simply awesome and in a great location very close to Sea World, parks, and down town San Diego. For breakfast each day, Bo ate different varieties of huge pancakes (his favorite was banana) with bacon. He was so excited that each day he sent his compliments to the Hilton chef!

While we were in San Diego for a few days we went to a San Diego Padres game at beautiful PETCO Park where he ate a hamburger and fries. Highlights of the game included the fact that though there was a man eating a very large bag of peanuts during the game, maybe 5 feet away from Bo, we didn't feel the need to leave because of his peanut desensitization treatment. Here is a picture of Bo running the bases on PETCO Park field after the Padres game while wearing his LSU baseball jersey. Pretty cool considering LSU won their sixth NCAA College Baseball national championship on Wednesday, June 24!

San Diego was a blast and we thoroughly enjoyed the Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum and exploring Coronado Island. Bo is really developing an appreciation for our military and the freedom that their service and sacrifices provide us all. God bless our troops!

Next we headed to LEGOLAND in Carlsbad for two days where he really had a lot of fun. Our family even won the fire truck competition putting out the fire in our building first before the other teams! The LEGOLAND site provides food allergy safe dining info to help plan your trip and they are helpful at the park. Bo enjoyed his lunch at Castle Burgers and Pizza Mania at LEGOLAND. FYI, in our opinion, the rides and attractions at LEGOLAND will primarily appeal to kids under the age of 9 and we found the time of each actual ride/attraction to be a little short. So if there is a long wait, you may be dissappointed with how fast the ride ends once you get on. There is enough to do at LEGOLAND, including their new Sea Life aquarium, to keep everyone entertained for a day or maybe a day and a half.

While staying at a great new Marriott Residence Inn in Oceanside, Bo ate the do-it yourself waffles and bacon for breakfast each day.

We wrapped up our vacation with a few days at Disneyland Resort and Disney's California Adventure Park in Annaheim. Our first visit to the California version of Disney was a lot of fun and we enjoyed the new to us rides, as well as, our favorites. We had a great meal, including Bo's spaghetti, from the Trattoria restaurant in California Adventures. However, the Disneyland California web site is really lacking in information on food allergy dining compared to the Disney World Florida site. That being said they were very helpful while planning our trip and in the park.

Some final comments on peanut safe dining while in San Diego, LEGOLAND, Disneyland and California Adventure parks. All of these parks were accommodating to guests with food allergies both during planning and in the parks. We had no problem bringing in a small backpack/cooler with Bo's EpiPens and peanut safe snacks.

FYI, while in California, Bo ate peanut safe at the following fast food places:

• Chick-Fil-A  (read more about my Chick-fil-A experiences)
• Subway
• Wendy’s
• Red Robin  (Note to Red Robin, please open locations in South Louisiana!)

May all of our food allergic loved ones stay safe and please continue your prayers that we can realize the peanut allergy and other food allergy desensitization treatment successes with everyone sooner vs. later!

God bless.

Bo's parents
www.askaboutmypeanutallergy.com

Bo Eats Peanut Butter M&Ms!

Yesterday, Bo achieved an amazing milestone in his peanut allergy desensitization treatment at Arkansas Children's Hospital by eating more than 30 peanut butter M&Ms without an allergic reaction!   

Let's pause and reflect back to let that sink in because it's been a long journey to get Bo to this point with his life threatening peanut allergy. Prior to eating the peanut butter M&Ms yesterday under the watchful eye of his peanut allergy study nurses and doctor, it had been more than 2 years since Bo had tasted peanut butter. That was his first time tasting peanut butter when he bit into a chocolate candy at age 4 not knowing it had peanut butter in it. Even though he immediately spit the candy out, not liking the taste, he started to go into anaphylactic shock within minutes rapidly progressing from instant mouth itching and hives to difficulty breathing and a severe drop in blood pressure.

Bo had always told us he hated peanuts and was allergic to them though to our knowledge he had never eaten them since he always said he did not like them. We never really understood how he knew he didn't like peanuts and figured he would just try them one day when he felt like it.

Days after this episode we had confirmation that Bo was indeed severly allergic to peanuts. In fact, multiple rounds of food allergy testing demonstrated he would have strong reactions to just 1/5th of a peanut.

So now after eating increasing amounts of peanut flour every day for a year in the peanut allergy desensitization study in Little Rock, the amount of peanut flour had become so large that it is not very palatable or easy to eat. So the treatment protocol allows for the daily dosage to be switched from peanut flour to certain foods containing real peanuts that have a known, consistently measurable amount of peanut protein. (NOTE: thanks to Mars company/M&M Candies for providing the peanut protein content information of their candies to the peanut allergy study staff and shame on Reese's candies for refusing to provide this information to support the research.)

 So yesterday, after a skin prick test, blood work and then a few anxious moments about the reality of what we were asking him to do... Bo slowly began eating the peanut butter M&Ms... a lot of them!

Now, every day Bo will eat a measured amount of peanut butter M&Ms for his daily peanut desensitization dosage. His blood will be tested every few months to monitor the level of peanut specific IgE antibodies it is producing to the peanut protein. If his peanut specific antibody count drops to a low enough number, the study will have Bo stop eating the daily dosages for a period of time and then remeasure his peanut protein antibody count to see if the effects on his immunology system are long term. Now you're caught up.

FYI, we have been told that the peanut allergy and egg allergy desensitization studies at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock are currently full and are NOT taking new applicants.

God bless,

Bo's Parents
www.askaboutmypeanutallergy.com

USA TODAY Article Has Bo's Peanut Allergy Update

A new USA TODAY article entitled "New strategies help build immunity against food allergies" includes quotes from Bo's mom Betsy and provides an update on his peanut allergy desensitization treatment noting that "He's now consuming a daily dose of peanut flour equivalent to 15 peanuts. On May 4, he'll be 'converted' from peanut flour to real food containing peanuts."

The article covers the success of several emerging food allergy treatments including: oral immunotherapy, sublingual therapy, and food allergy herbal therapy-2 (known as FAHF-2). We want to personally thank USA TODAY Medical Reporter Rita Rubin for her tireless research that resulted in one of the most thorough and accurate articles about these emerging food allergy treatments that we have seen and yet it's still easy to read.

USA TODAY article "New strategies help build immunity against food allergies" by Medical Reporter Rita Rubin.

YouTube Video: Coping With Food Allergy

We received a request on behalf of Johnson and Johnson to make people aware that they have a Health Channel on YouTube and one of their videos is about parents of children with food allergies, and an allergy specialist discussing coping strategies. The video can be viewed using this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apje3PcawNA&feature=channel_page

As always, we want to thank our readers for all their prayers, great comments and e-mails.

Sincerely,

Bo's Parents
www.askaboutmypeanutallergy.com

Bo's Peanut Allergy Study Update

Bo has now been participating in a peanut allergy desensitization treatment study at Arkansas Children's Hospital for the past two years. The amount of peanut flour that Bo is now eating every day, without an allergic reaction, is equivalent to the protein found in 10 1/2 peanuts.

Peanut Desensitization Treatment Phase II

We are so excited because our treatment travel schedule is about to improve dramatically. After next weeks visit, we don't go back to Little Rock for 30 days. These 30 days represent the highest daily dosage of peanut flour used in the peanut allergy desensitization treatment study. At the end of the 30 days, we return to Little Rock so Bo can undergo a food challenge requiring him to eat increasing amounts of real peanuts throughout the day while on an IV under Doctor supervision. If he passes that all day challenge, he enters the phase of the treatment study that relies on the kids eating actual peanuts or peanut butter every day, instead of peanut flour, to maintain their peanut allergy desensitization. During this treatment phase of eating actual peanuts every day, we only have to return to Arkansas Children's Hospital once every 4 months, instead of every other week. That will be like getting a raise to the family budget and a lot of personal time back by eliminating 4 travel days every month!

Returning to a Sense of Normalcy

In the past month we have felt confident enough in Bo's peanut allergy treatment that we have begun to reintroduce some activities that had become too risky after we realized Bo had a severe peanut allergy a few years ago. Examples of normalcy that Bo's successful peanut desensitization treatment has afforded us include the following recent activities:

• After 50+ stays, Bo has now eaten breakfast twice at the Little Rock hotel restaurant
• Bo has eaten Krispy Kreme doughnuts recently from several different locations
• Bo was allowed to participate in an overnight camping trip with his scout pack and dad aboard the U.S.S. Alabama battleship in Mobile (Exploring this historic war ship was very cool and we all gained an even deeper appreciation of the sacrifices made by all of the outstanding U.S. service men and women of our military, to ensure our freedom. May God bless them, their families and the U.S.A.!)

After the recent media reports of the success of peanut allergy desensitization treatments like Bo's in the last few weeks, we received a lot of e-mails, comments and media inquiries. It made us realize that some people are not noticing the new navigation links at the top of our site to other sections of our blog, such as, FAQ, Peanut Safe Foods, Food Allergy Letters, Food Allergy Products and Archives of our past blog posts (organized by date and topic). HINT!

As always, we want to thank our readers for all the great comments and e-mails.

Sincerely,

Bo's Parents
www.askaboutmypeanutallergy.com