Josh had negative dairy skin tests for years. Yet every time we orally
challenged him with dairy products, he'd have an anaphylactic reaction.


If you believe that you observe symptoms, refrain from any exposure. If
there are some clinicians who believe you mistaken, that's more their
problem than yours. Stick to you guns.

Do remember, though, that the number of variables is very large, and that
you can sometimes be mistaken about what the real trigger was. We were
certain that Josh was mildly allergic to wheat. After we got him to a
stable state (all other allergens controlled), we retested wheat (alone)
and found that he had no reaction to it.

Of course, after two severe reactions to dairy products, we were certain
that we should totally eliminate dairy products. At age ten, he finally
started testing positive to dairy. This tells us that tests are not fully
definitive, and that they must be treated, at best, as potentially helpful
indicators.

  Those doctors who merely look at tests as being the sole definitive means
of diagnosis are simply mistaken. There are children who do not react on
their skin, yet show unmistakable symptoms upon oral challenge.  If such
clinicians insist on definitive observation, let them incur the expense of
double-blind challenges, but only if *you're* certain that such a test will
not put the child at risk.

What's most important here is that you find an intelligent, experienced
doctor who will trust your observations and work with you.  This is not
easy. Our best experience was with an allergist who has allergies and a
pediatrician whose daughter has food allergies.

Good luck

Mark

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Mark Feblowitz