Food challenge-- hazelnut.

[CMdeux]

So.

Last month, DD skin tested negative for hazelnut.  She has never tested truly positive to hazelnut.

When DD was five, we tested a panel of treenuts (hazelnut, pecan, almond, + ??) and when nothing came up positive, we got the green light (and encouragement) to introduce them-- but cautiously, obviously, given her reaction history and the fact that she very clearly had MFA anyway.

So we did-- she ate hazelnuts for a few months, and then we decided to branch out to almonds... second few that she ate, she broke into hives all over her back and torso within a few minutes.  Obviously almond allergic!!     (This has since been confirmed with reactions to cross-contamination which is almost certainly almond.)

.... later that week, she had one equivocal reaction to a handful of hazelnuts, (which could easily have been almond cross-contamination), followed by a marginally positive skin test when she was about seven.  Hard to know, though-- because the pistachio skin test basically ATE HER ARM. 

Disappointed, we retreated from all treenuts. 

But then we reconsidered.  We live where about 99% of the North American filbert/hazelnut crop is grown. 

She's now twelve.

We did have a bit of a hard time locating hazelnuts that have NO co-processing and are sold to the public.  Our favorite supplier is completely peanut free, but does handle small quantities of almonds (direct from a single grower in the San Joaquin) and local walnuts in VERY small amounts.  This grower is listed in our resources section, for anyone interested.  They do make WONDERFUL chocolate candies that are completely peanut-safe since they run their own equipment and use Guittard chocolates exclusively.  They are also just really nice people.   

ANYway...

We bought a pound of in-shell hazelnuts from them, I picked through them to remove any with cracked shells (because they may have had contact with almonds, see), WASHED THEM IN VERY HOT WATER SEVERAL TIMES, and then dried/roasted them in my convection oven at 225F for an hour.

I then placed them into a doubled freezer bag and used a rock maple rolling pin to break the shells open, handpicked the nut meats out, and used the rolling pin to grind them into meal (as well as I could, anyway).

Samples:
I then placed several WHOLE nuts into a ziploc bag, and also gave our allergist a sample of the ground material in a second ziploc bag (20g, weighed), and placed a known mass of milled flax seed (5g) into a second ziploc bag.  He (and we) like to do challenges BLINDED-- that is, with a control.  Since we were using applesauce to mask texture, it was important that the control match the nut sample in appearance, at least for that first few doses.  I used flax-seed meal from Hodgson's Mill, an opened package that we've been using for several months.

The challenge was today:

Initial set up was to check all vitals, and monitor both peak flows and blood pressure throughout.

Allergist took samples, and applesauce (Seneca natural-- two of the single-serve sizes), back to his office and mixed samples there, delivering them in 25mL dosing cups with plastic spoons to the exam room where we stayed.  The RN's and Doc were within hailing distance throughout the entire 4+ hours of the challenge.  They monitored DD during and after each dose, timing doses 20 minutes apart.  She started with the flax-seed, and then moved on to a VERY small amount of hazelnut mixed into the applesauce-flax mixture (maybe 50 mg?)


We were there a looooonnnnng, loooooonnnnnnnnnng time, but DD basically ate about half a cup of hazelnuts today!!   


She very definitely wants hazelnut pancakes for breakfast on Sunday morning, she said.   

[Janelle205]

How exciting!  Hope that her pancakes are delicious!

[Ra3chel]

Oh, that's wonderful--doubly so with the season and region!!! 

[Mfamom]

oh wow!  great news! 
Now, can you come here and convince my ds to do an almond challenge?  we're fairly certain he's not allergic to tree nuts, but he has ZERO interest in trying them. 
I would love to have some tree nut options. 

Anyway, great news for your dd!!

[hk]

That is wonderful news!  Congratulations!

[maeve]

Congrats!   I see Nutella in your future.  

[Macabre]

Oh wow!!!!  Yea!   

[CMdeux]

Thanks, everyone!  We are pretty happy about this one, no question.

DD is eating Nutella and crackers for dinner. 

  I may try to persuade her that PEARS and a few cranberries would also be traditional where we live.  LOL!

[yellow]

Yay!!

[CMdeux]

Okay, in weird news.... DD just developed a BUNCH of hives from her mouth down her neck and torso...




Have no idea.  She had Nutella with pancakes this morning, but she's (quite literally) eaten Nutella since Friday morning. 

Weird.  It's been at least four hours since she ate anything, and she was just sitting and working on her math homework for the past thirty minutes.  I don't get it.  <SIGH> 

More info on this--

apparently this was ~30 min after her daily egg dose (she's now at 170mg, up from 50 mg a year ago).  Worrying.  Worries me some that if we're backsliding on egg after introducing hazelnut that maybe she's actually somewhat allergic and filling up her allergy cup by eating it....


hmmm.

don't like where that thought process takes me, for sure-- because I worry that maybe we're poking a sleeping bear if that it the case.  Known (severe) anaphylaxis potential... tree nut...

ai yi yi. 

Oh well.  Will wait and see what tomorrow brings, I guess.  <shrug>

[tigerlily]

While waiting for more on info on hives and hoping strongly they are not related to hazelnuts.....

Here's a thought--one of the few times when TN potentially cross contaminate ice cream at Burgerville is when it is hazelnut season. Wow. Year round dessert in a restaurant. 

[CMdeux]

Well, we haven't had another chance to test this with straight up hazelnuts, since our local grower has officially shelled all of their nuts.  <sigh>  And they handle almonds, so we can only buy nuts in the shell from them.

DD has been happily gobbling up Nutella like it is going out of style, however.  Nothing further that we can definitely say is food-related.  She's had a few blips here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary scheme of events, really (random hives out and about, random hives on exposed skin.. um.. just because?.. and hoarseness/coughing/throat irritation in some places like Costco or grocery stores).  We're thinking this is probably not related to hazelnuts, though it's possible that we're pushing hard enough on her egg dose (she's dosed daily with a small amount of baked egg-- about 1/40th of an egg, at this point) that she may be having more symptoms to other stuff.   BTDT-- we kind of knew the drill going into this. 

Burgerville doesn't have the hazelnut shakes right now-- only eggnog.  Which, um... yeah-- nearly as bad, at least for us personally. LOL.  They talked to us about the fact that they are trained to keep the 'xc' and specialty shakes on a single shake machine, though-- so no XC in the regular (safe) shakes.   

[eragon]

well done yr Dd for enjoying nutella, our son cant bring himself to try, although he isnt allergic to hazelnuts anymore.
he has grown out of all but 1 tree nut, and can eat walnuts, and has tried a almond and liked them.

I suspect that as he remembers hazelnut causing reactions he doesnt feel like trying it, and of course we have had lots of odd reactions last year, (one yesterday as well, but thats another story) so its understandable.

when i was little we had a hazelnut tree at the bottom of our garden, and can remember picking them,  thats not part of my kids childhood.

Now  as yr baby has outgrown one , for def, perhaps more chance for others to outgrow! it does  seem to follow  odd individual path.