Ask About My Peanut Allergy

Well, it's been almost a year since we last posted an update about Bo's peanut allergy desensitization treatment study at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock. We'll explain the delay later in this post.

For over 3 years now, Bo has been successfully eating 34 peanutbutter M&Ms every day to maintain his desensitization to peanuts. During this phase of treatment our visits to Arkansas Children's Hospital have been less frequent so there has not been much news to post on any changes to his situation. Our lives have pretty much become "normalized" over the last few years because of this wonderful peanut allergy study... other than his need to eat a bag of peanut butter M&Ms every day! Bo is 10 years old now and plays football, basketball and baseball among many other things. In fact, he routinely sits in the dugout with peanut shells all over the floor with no reaction at all!

This week marks a major milestone in Bo's treatment as he will face a food challenge and quarterly blood work and skin tests at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock to measure his current allergic reaction level to peanuts. If the food challenge and other tests at the hospital go well, Bo will enter the next long term phase of his peanut allergy desensitization treatment by stopping his daily doses of peanutbutter all together. This will be a bit of a mental challenge us all as we are a bit anxious about not having the daily routine we have become so used to that has so far almost completely eliminated Bo's life threatening peanut allergy.

After a period of weeks without his daily doses, we will then return to Arkansas Children's Hospital for another food challenge and other tests to determine if his body is able to maintain his desensitization to peanuts without eating daily doses of peanut protien.

We promise to keep you as updated as possible. Please bear in mind that we are facing a bit of a new personal challenge as Dad's job of 7 years is being relocated far away so we have some tough decisons ahead for the family which will be taking up a lot of our time.

We also want to explain that one of the primary reasons for the lack of posts over the past 9 months was the lengthy battle for Bo's grandmother "Nana" with leukemia. Our focus was on making trips to be with her at M.D. Anderson in Houston, praying for her and all the things that go along with a loved one battling a debilitating disease. Our beloved "Nana" passed just before Christmas after a long and brave fight.

We want to remind you that just about anyone age 18-60 can become part of the bone marrow donor database with a just a simple cheek swab to collect some DNA. Learn more about becoming a bone marrow donor at www.marrow.org.

Sincerely,

Bo & Family