Our 1st Food Challenge and success!!

Today was Alexa's first official "in office" food challenge.  We were challenging sesame since her numbers were low and she had never been exposed (that we are aware of anyway).  I brought along things to do since we knew we would be there for 3 hours but they had a special food challenge room with books, toys, games and a TV!  For the challenge itself, we brought Tahini (pure sesame seeds) and chocolate pudding to mix it into.  We arrived at 8:30 a.m.  They weighed her (in case they needed to give her meds), examined her lungs, took her blood pressure and pulse and then gave her the first dose.  She received 1/4 tsp in pudding.  She liked it and said it tasted like Sunbutter.  They waited 10 minutes then checked her lungs and skin and gave her the next dose.  They continued to do this until a full 2 tablespoons of sesame had been eaten.  I'm fairly sure that was the most chocolate pudding she has EVER eaten!  After the last dose they had us wait 2 hours and then did a final lung and skin check and since everything was clear we were free to go!  I will say that the first dose was very stressful, since I knew what could happen, but overall it was a very pleasant experience and I'm pretty certain this was the first time in a long time Alexa has had an undistracted Mom all to herself for 3 hours! We even played Monopoly the first time-which was pretty fun. 

I'm SO thankful that she passed the test and extremely thankful that we did not need to give her any Epinephrine.  So now we can eliminate sesame from her list of allergens! Thank you GOD and thank you to the nurses and Dr. Kim at the Jaffee Food Allergy Institute @ Mt. Sinai Hospital!