We took Ethan in for allergy testing today. The nurse swabbed his nose first thing and when the doctor came in he was almost excited at how bad his swab was. He said he'd never, in 12 years, seen one so dirty and that he was sorry we had to wait so long because he had to show it to the nurses as a teaching tool. Way to freak me out in the first 30 seconds! This doctor was so geeky.

P.S. When I say dirty, I don't mean that there was actually dirt and dog hair and gunk up there. I mean that there were lots of white blood cells (the doctor used a word for themthat I did not know and my best attempts at googling haven't found anything so I think I heard him wrong) in a certain state. There were tons of them under the microscope. That's what he meant by "dirty".

Anyway, basically it means that Ethan has likely had sinusitis since he was 1(!) and we need to get that cleared up like now. He said its not uncommon for it be overlooked by pediatricians because unless there is mucus pouring out they aren't really trained to look for more. DS's nose was 80-90% closed with swollen tissue. So he's starting us on a 3 week antibiotic and daily steroidal nose spray.

His prick test showed that his highest response was to grass and cats (dogs was there, but just borderline), which was sort of a relief. Grass is pretty easy to manage, and we don't have cats. We'll have to be more vigilant when we're at my Mom's (she has two cats), but it could have been much worse.

We're to give him the spray every day until two weeks before his next appointment in October. Then they'll swab him again and see if he'll only need the nose spray during high grass pollen months or year round.

The doctor does feel that given the very dirty swab that statistically the allergies will likely worsen over the next few years and he'll need weekly, tapering to monthly, allergy shots. Because family history of allergies and asthma, he feels we should be aggressive now to prevent asthma from forming.

I'm so glad that we got this done and things were not as bad as they could have been. I'm not thrilled about the nose spray and need to research that more. But hopefully Ethan will finally have clear sinuses!

Ethan did great. He was brave and obeyed all the instructions the doctor and nurse gave. He got an ice cream sandwich on the way home for his excellent behavior.

Guess who has taken a bottle of pumped breastmilk two days in a row with not one single fuss? Elly! She took it like it was nothing at all. That means next girls night out, I'll go sans baby. Woo! She's such a easy baby.