Peanut allergy

Several years ago, Wife took Son 1 for allergy testing and then declared that he was allergic to peanuts. She made a great big deal of this, warning my parents, all other family members, the school … everybody within shouting distance … that he had to avoid peanuts because he was so dreadfully allergic to them that the could kill him. At the time my father responded with puzzlement, noting that he had given both boys peanut butter sandwiches for years with no ill effects. I just shrugged and stayed out of it; traditionally Wife has been responsible for all the medical decisions in our house.

But I did wonder about it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking about Münchausen syndrome by proxy. So just before his most recent testing last year, I told her that I had read somewhere that “childhood allergies often disappear over time all by themselves” (I hadn’t read any such thing, but there was method behind my fabricating it) and that I was going to want a copy of the report if Son 1 were still allergic to anything. She came back (exactly as I had imagined she would) announcing that yes indeed, all of Son 1’s allergies had cleared themselves up. Needless to add, she did not bring along a copy of the report.

But this did not satisfy my curiosity completely. Now I wanted to see the other reports. Had Son 1 ever been allergic to peanuts, or had she made up the whole thing? It took me a long time to get around to it, but I finally contacted the medical clinic and asked them to send me copies of all Son 1’s allergy tests ever. Naturally I asked them to mail me the results at work, not at home. And they arrived yesterday.

The results were not quite what I had imagined, but they were interesting all the same. There were four tests: one from 2000, one from 2005, one from 2010, and one without a date. Of those four tests, three of them showed no reaction to anything except the histamine control. Those three were 2000, 2010 [the recent one that I mentioned above], and the undated one. The test from 2005 did show allergies … and that date sounds right because it fit the age Son 1 would have been at the time. But what they showed was exactly the same level of response for peanuts, oranges [not that Wife ever had us stop feeding him oranges!], four or five different trees and grasses -- and also pure histamine. All of those irritants were scored exactly the same. Now, a little common sense tells you there has to be something wrong with the test. For an irritant to score the same as pure histamine should indeed mean (if true) that the patient had better stay away from it. If true, that state of affairs really could be cause for alarm. But if he had been that allergic to oranges, we would have seen him swell up after eating an orange or drinking orange juice. If he had been that allergic to half a dozen common trees and grasses, he would have swelled up every time the wind picked up during pollen season. And he never did any of those things. So why did the test come out that way? I have no idea, but maybe he was sick the day of the test or something like that. Certainly with results that fly so far in the face of common sense it would have been worth it to retest again in a little while – maybe a month, maybe six months, I don’t know, but something a lot more immediate than five years! And I also have to wonder, … why pick on peanuts? Why tell Son 1 that peanuts would kill him? All I can assume is that making it all a story about peanuts allowed her a measure of control: it made the story tidy and manageable, and it allowed her to indulge all her overprotective mother fantasies by bellowing at the world about how they have to be careful because otherwise a simple mistake could kill Her Son.

It’s kind of crazy.

I should tell Son 1 at some point, but I’m not sure if I should do it now or if there is any reason to wait. Heck, I should tell everybody I know that the whole exercise was a false alarm. But I know that I am not thinking clearly on this point, because I know that part of my motivation is a rather base desire to embarrass Wife and that is clouding my ability to see the whole picture. So I’d like a sanity-check from any of you. How do I communicate this?