In this week's #OhhMoments, Cherise shares how her son Roan began showing indications of food allergies when he was only two months old.
"My name is Cherise and I have a little boy called Roan who is just over a year old now.
Roan was born on February 28, 2018. We first noticed something wasn’t right when Roan was two months old, I was round my friends house and Roan started to breathe differently, short sharp breaths and he wasn’t very responsive - I was terrified.
The ambulance took Roan to hospital where we stayed in over night and they decided that he was allergic to dairy and put him on the prescription milk ‘Nutramigen’.
From this day Roan's skin seemed to get terrible, he was covered in eczema and his arms were weepy. He was always itchy so we had to cover his hands all day every day
Then in July his skin was so bad that I took him to the doctors and she sent him to the hospital again, they kept him in for a couple of days and gave him antibiotics to clear up the infection. They decided that the prescription milk nutramigen wasn’t working for him and put him onto a different one ‘Alfamino’.
His skin still didn’t improve and I made several trips to the doctors to see if they could do anything but no creams seemed to help. So we went on holiday two days later and the whole holiday Roan wasn’t really himself, I just thought it was because he didn’t like being away from home.
When we got back from holiday the following week, Roan woke up one morning and had spots on his chest and chin, I thought it looked like chicken pox, but wasn’t sure so I took him to the doctors to be sure. I struggled to get an appointment that day but they managed to fit me in the afternoon as I was getting worried as his skin was getting worse and worse and he seemed to be getting quite a high temperature. As soon as the doctor saw him she sent him up to a&e again with suspected eczema herpeticum.
When we got there the doctor saw Roan and I in the waiting room and looked alarmed, as by this point his skin was awful and he wasn’t very alert. They rushed him into put a drip in him. I was so worried and in tears as they seemed very panicked.
They wanted to put a drip in his arm immediately but where his skin was so bad they couldn’t see a vein to put into it took multiple attempts to get one in but where the medication was so harsh it kept causing the drip to come out. In the end they just injected it straight into him because they couldn’t do it.
Roan ended up staying in hospital for six days, the hospital consultants said it was the worst case of eczema they had ever seen. I demanded to see a dermatologist as by this point I was getting so frustrated that my poor boy had to keep going through this. The dermatologist put Roan for some allergy testing and the results confirmed he was allergic to Cow's Milk, Wheat, Egg White, Soya, Peanuts, Banana and Dogs.
We have cut all those out of Roan diet and lifestyle but unfortunately we are still having problems and are due to see an allergy specialist in July. Fortunately Roans allergies are not extremely severe like some people, however it has still been tough and it feels like an endless journey trying to get to the bottom of all of his allergies.
" I’m hoping he will one day grow out of them. There seems to be a lack of help and understanding with allergies and I really hope that we can raise more allergy awareness together" - Cherise
