Dr Appt Update!

First, I will say things went super well. Dr Wood was a very very patient man who pretty much tells it like it is without a lot of fluff. We appreciate that. This is the first doctor we have ever seen that can actually say he not only has one patient like Lucy, but that he has had at least 100 from around the country!
For starters, he doesnt reccommend a food challange this September. He gave me a choice regarding whether or not to trial foods if I felt in my gut it would work out, but he was not reccommending it. He said that generally "these kids" that are like Lucy fall into a few categories of severity- some eating many foods by Kindergarten and bouncing back from food challanges quickly, others not eating foods until middle or high school and taking a tremendous amount of time to recover from each fail, and others that grow into adulthood without any foods at all and lead productive healthy lives on formula. He felt that Lucy fell into one of the more severe categories. There is little reason to push foods so hard right now especially knowing there is a slim to nil chance of her passing. As he put it- she will fail 19 out of 20 foods and is it worth all the agony at this time to get the one food?? At this time Lucy is growing acceptably on her formula and is generally happy with it, so there just isnt any urgency needed to get foods into her diet.
He went on to say children like Lucy have allergies that don't show up on blood tests because of the type of immunity they stem from(allergy tests test for a specific antibody to an allergen) But, as a precaution he ran some more blood work just to look for any other anaphalxys triggers for safety reasons.
He noted her significant amount of skin irritation. It conveniently happened to be pretty flared up this morning so he was able to see it in full swing. He wasn't recommending medication for it at this time, because again, there is a chance she will react to it. The way he described it was that her body releases entirely too much of the hormones that cause allergic reactions- she can react to just about anything at anytime and can sometimes react just because she feels like it. Stomach pain, rashes, swelling, runny noses, watery eyes are all just a part of her life. If symptoms become life disrupting enough we can go the medication route and assume the risks that may come with giving her oral medications but we don't feel we are at that point just yet.
Dr Wood also was not recommending another scope. He felt there was no sense in intentionally flaring her up just to see what her body is doing on the inside specifically. There is too much risk that we could throw her back into a downward spiral like we saw this past fall and winter.
So in the end, the doctor advised us to stay the heck away from food and do what we could to minimize her interaction with it. He even warned us to watch our cooking. Apparently when we cook food in an open pan on the stove, or use flour or dough to bake, food proteins are entering the air and could cause a reaction.
We are so relieved after this appointment. We feel like there is finally someone directing the ship here who has experience. Dr Wood assured us before we left that he could handle everything Lucy needs without a problem.