What. A. Week.

Well, two weeks really – I started this blog last weekend but never got time to finish it. Ironic really!

Hello. Remember me? I haven’t written for a while… I’m Allergen Dad: father to an allergic son, husband to a weary wife and I will have my pudding (when done with the allergen menu) etc… Things have been a bit manic recently, just one thing after another. What with my wife’s endometriosis and potential PCOS diagnosis, finding out that my team is in line for significant cost reductions (therefore being at reasonably high risk of redundancy – no, I still haven’t heard yet) and diet changes that come with the PCOS and my own desire to lose weight/eat more healthily – I’ve not had much time.

So, to add to that, I decided I wanted to start writing a novel, took a part as a principle character in an amateur dramatics production of Zeussical the Musical, took on an extra project at work in an attempt to show willing/demonstrate progression towards promotion, my boss unfortunately having to take early paternity leave on the same day that we lost our other (third) team member to another role – leaving me to try and muddle through on my own during possibly the busiest week of the year, and my wife’s school (she’s a teacher) finding out with 12 hours notice that they’d be inspected all week. It’s been an interesting 14 days…

There are a few bits here that need unpicking… I don’t think I’ve really mentioned it before but both my wife and I have dabbled in amateur dramatics over the last 5-6 years. It was very much my wife’s hobby at first but I got dragged in to one of the plays and ended up embracing it far more than I had ever imagined I would. It’s been brilliant at giving us a sense of community and I’ve had some wonderful experiences and met some great people through it. To put it in context – acting is not something I ever thought I ‘did’. I was in drama productions in primary school but nothing since. It’s been a hell of a learning experience and one of the most humbling and confidence building experiences I could have asked for. The bond created through the jeopardy with your fellow cast members from a good play is stronger than anything else I’ve experienced. You often see ‘theatre types’ as overly familiar with a lot of hugs and kisses but I think that just comes with the level of trust you have to build with someone so that when you’re stood up on that (community centre) stage in front of thousands (or maybe just 80) of people you believe that neither of you is going to embarrass the other. I’ve played a Lancastrian WWI soldier, a court jester, a government minister’s personal secretary, a prison warden in Bad Girls, a small boy in the Snow Queen, an uptight beach-holidayer and now (after a little while off) Horton the Elephant in the loveliest silliest musical about the stories of Dr Zeuss. Show nights are the 5th to the 8th of December in Chalfont St Peter if you’re interested. I’ll share a link to the “Box Office” once it’s available. Oh and Steve, I’ll get Piglet to give back your biscuit (from the bin) soon…

My boss and great friend will read this, probably before he’s back from paternity leave, and in no-way am I trying to give you a guilt trip! I’m delighted to be able to help and hopefully I’ve kept the ship afloat well enough for you to come back to and captain – but you did choose one stinker of a window to miss!! Your new son is very adorable though! I’m glad you’re all safe and back home from hospital.

The book is nothing to write home about yet. I just had a sudden, and sustained, urge to write something down. I’ve written about 4000 words so far so it’s more than just a first chapter but I can’t work out whether it’s got legs or whether it’s just a different experience to try out. I was inspired by one of the first books of (probably) my favourite author, Haruki Murakami, called Pinball. I can’t tell you why but reading that made me determined to do something myself. He makes it seem a lot easier than it really is!

I should find about job security in the next week, I hope! We were meant to know by the end of September originally so it can’t be much longer… I’m trying to stay positive – there are perks to having to change jobs and ask yourself bigger questions about what you want to be doing. It’s coming up to nearly 6 years that I’ve worked for this company, I’d definitely had enough after 7 years at the previous place I worked! But at the same time I enjoy my current role and I wouldn’t be looking for other jobs immediately if I didn’t have to. Might need to up my followers (and content) if I was going to try and make it as a professional blogger!

So aside from a general update – there is one Allergen Dad specific thing that happened in the last week… Further to trying Piglet on oat milk a few weeks ago (and seeing no obvious adverse reactions), we decided to try him on soya. We meant to do it in the summer but with my wife’s surgery and everything else it just doesn’t seem to have been the right time until now.

Unfortunately he’d been a bit poorly at the end of last week. Nothing serious, just a coldy/virus thing that left him snotty, dozy and a bit clingy and pathetic. It had been keeping him awake at night – he actually woke up at one point struggling to breathe which was pretty scary for all of us! But by the end of last weekend he seemed to be back to himself. We’d bought some Jus-Roll croissants a week or so before in preparation and a Sunday morning seemed the perfect morning to try them out.

We chose them because they contain soybean oil. Soybean oil is a funny one. As you’d expect, it’s the oil from a soya bean but apparently because of the way it’s processed (pressed) it should be pretty pure oil (i.e. fat) rather than protein (which is the thing that people react to in soya). As such, it isn’t actually required to labelled as an allergen in the UK (and therefore I assume EU?) because it ‘shouldn’t’ cause a reaction in people allergic to soya. Obviously it’s a ‘may contains’ but that hasn’t usually been a problem for Piglet (on soya or milk). However we’d seen form previous experiences (not long after we’d taken him off soya) that he seemed to react to it. In fact we hadn’t even realised it was in it at first because isn’t flagged up on the packaging as an allergen.

The whole point of ‘climbing an allergen ladder’ is to start off with the weakest/most processed form of the allergen and then climb up through the list of intensities until you try it in its purest form (assuming you don’t get any reactions along the way). So if soybean oil is the first rung; a full edamame bean is the viewing platform at the top. I’ll be honest, I was feeling pretty confident. Piglet doesn’t seem to have had an obvious allergic reaction for quite some time and I find it hard to believe that neither us nor his nursery, despite everyone’s best efforts, had achieved a perfect run. Also he shouldn’t really react to soybean oil anyway so this was just a formality before we got on to the bigger tests…

Well – it’s safe to say Allergen Dad has not lost its ‘raison d’etre’…

Yeah – I’m certainly not about to give up blogging on allergies for the moment. The reaction was subtle, in fact at the end of the first couple of days we weren’t sure. There was no immediate flare up (we weren’t expecting one) and he didn’t seem in any obvious pain the first night. Also having been ill the previous week, we were kicking ourselves a little bit at not being 100% sure how to distinguish the symptoms of that from the soya. However by the end of the four days that followed I think both my wife and I were convinced that they had not been ‘normal’. Any one of the symptoms in isolation could easily be passed off as something else and I’m also very aware of the risks of confirmation bias that we were both looking for things that might be wrong. However, I’m pretty sure that we can say objectively that he:

• Slept badly every night, being really quite upset when he woke some times
• Was all over the place emotionally – we had complete fits of tears most mornings and evenings over the tiniest of things
• Seemed completely lethargic – long naps needed every day, despite not much exercise
• Was completely off his food – which for Piglet is big news! He ate notably less both at home and at nursery including meals that we know he loves (roast chicken, quesadillas, cereal etc…). The best example was my wife texting me to tell me that he hadn’t even eaten his tomatoes one lunch time. My reply: simply “dial 999?”

Just looking down that list, I’m reminded how difficult it was to diagnose Piglet in the first place. Any one of those could be the result of something completely separate, and in some cases just the symptoms of being a 3-year-old boy. But all together, in such contrast to his usual behaviour, I can only make a judgement call as one of his parents. In fact, both me and my wife are completely sure that he was struggling, pretty much all week, with some sort of allergic reaction.

I’m sad for him – it would have been so much easier if we could have ruled soya out as a problem by now. I also feel a twinge of parental guilt at having deliberately given him the food that seems to have made him ill. However, I think it’s important that we continue to test our assumptions. I’m also sad for him that he’s had such a uncomfortable week. He’s a brave little soldier and he seems to continue to find things to be upbeat about but he’s also shed more tears this week than in the last month and it’s so, so hard when he doesn’t even want you to comfort him directly at times. That said, I’m also happy that we have been able to identify this reaction and help him avoid it (most of the time). Listing the things he’s been struggling with this week, you can see so clearly why people might continually struggle with these things without realising them. It makes me understand a bit better something I’ve always felt incredibly stupid about which is how could I have gone from the age of 17 to 30-something without realising I was still allergic to milk?!

Well, hopefully next week will be easier with a lighter workload, no school inspections, no allergic reactions and maybe even no job losses. Until of course we decide that we need to try Piglet on cow’s milk to test that as well…