Trip to the allergist

We took Christopher into Boston Children's to see an allergist. Since my health care is Cambridge based, we thought we'd just go there since it has a good reputation. We called up and asked for an appointment with someone. We got the guy who wrote the book on peanut allergies.

His food allergies are not very serious. He had one, skin-only reaction to eggs once. But we made the mistake of getting his blood tested for allergies last month hoping that they'd come up negative. They didn't. They weren't very strongly positive either, though. So we thought we'd get some help interpreting the results.

We felt a little guilty taking the time of an expert for something that's pretty minor in Chris, but it turns out he was fascinated by the lesion on Christopher's back. Apparently it is a mastocytoma, or something, and it usually shows up with thousands on one person. Chris has two. Dr Y brought two residents from down the hall to see.

Chris also seems to have dermatographia, in which the skin turns bright red after the slightest scratch. (literally, "skin writing") Dr Y also demonstrated this to the residents using the tip of a retracted retractable pen. I thought everyones skin did this. Mandy says no. Apparently I have it, too, although not as pronounced as Christopher's.

Anyway, it seems that what Christopher has is very mild compared to the classic cases. We're just wondering if it's something that gets worse or fades with time.