Another Moment of Truth

Jake has multiple allergies--peanut allergies especially serious. He carries an epipen, and every year when he was young, we'd dutifully go to Dr. Brown's for the annual "testing".

We love Dr. Brown. We first went to him after a terrible allergic episode where Jake's whole head swelled up after eating colored gummy worms (I was convinced it was the dye). His eyes were bulging out of head even the next day and I rushed him sweating like a maniac to the urgent care while he cried and screamed. You worry about all the pricks during the testing -- and my little boy would look at his arm in wonder where they wrote, "peanuts", "soy", "dust mite", "pollen", "crab", "egg". He tried to rub them off -- Yup, was allergic to all of them.

The office has a DVD player in every room and Jake would watch Disney movies while getting tested. Even Gary was jealous when he heard what Jake got to do in the Dr's office. One year, when Jake was 9 or 10 he chose the movie "Crash", I had wanted to see it too, but the nurse raised her eyebrows, smiled and said, "are you supposed to be watching this?" during the confrontational opening.

Every year we suspected Jake would grow out of his egg allergy and we would bring scrambled eggs to eat for the "egg challenge". Every year his arm would swell up from the egg test, and Dr. Brown would joke, well, I'll have to eat the eggs myself since the testing showed him still allergic to eggs.

I insisted Jake get tested before he went off to college. Maybe he's no longer allergic to eggs, or there's something else we would find out about for dorm life. I remember David had to go with Gary to all the last minute college Dr's appointments because he technically wasn't 18. So the moment of truth happened when I had to hold myself back from accompanying Jake to the allergy testing. Would he ask the right questions? Could the Dr suggest any watch-outs for college life? Did I just want to see the allergist one last time since he was a trusted advisor for 15 years of my life? Did I want to go for my child or me? You form such bonds with the people who care for your kids throughout these years--but there's some feeling of finality when the kids move on to college and go for that "last visit".