OSU Trip 2008 - Part 5

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The results are in!

To read the test each injection site was compared with two controls - a negative control of saline which should give no response and a positive control of histamine which should give the biggest response - meaning a big ass hive. Those sites which were larger than the saline were given a reading of 1 to 4, with 4 being the biggest reaction equal to the histamine.

After 15 minutes he was scoring 1 or 2 for five different molds, only one of which was positive from his last test six years ago. He also scored 2 on the following trees, four of which were positive last time -

Ash
Beech
Birch
Cottonwood
Elm Hickory
Maple
Oak
Sycamore
Pine
Orchard grass

In the animal category he scored two for goose, duck, and rat. But the big surprise was - HUMAN. My horse is allergic to ME. I guess turnaround is fair play, since I'm allergic to him too. He didn't have any of these animal reactions last time. For insects he scored 3's for deer fly, horse fly, mold mite, and midges, all of which he reacted to last time.

For the four hour read, in the mold category, all his reactions were down to 0. Not sure what to make of that. However, he popped up a host of weed reactions, with 2's for nettle, cocklebur, dock-sorrel, lambsquarter, pigweed, plantain, and black willow. He also added a 3 for alfalfa! He did lose most of the tree species though, so that helps.

In animals, he popped up scores of 2 for goose, duck, chicken, cat, dog, and a big 5 (which means it was bigger than the huge histamine spot) was goat. Weird!

So out of the twelve allergens that he was positive for last time, he has lost the four hour, long term sensitivity to eight of them. I think this is really very good! The insect category was the same because his old serum did not include insects. The docs don't think it's effective to desensitize against insects due to the large genetic diversity on the insect population. Just keeping him out of the bugs and using fly sprays and masks would work much better.

I got the new serum mix and started it last week. It contains what they think are the biggest threats to Kaswyn having a huge breakout like last time.

3 of the most reactive mold species
Alfalfa
Goose
Dog
Goat
Rat
Human
Johnson (a tree, I think)

I got four vials, each with an increasing amount of allergen in them. I'll give him a shot every other day, starting with 0.2 ml from vial one and increasing the amount by 0.2 ml each time until I get to 1 ml. Then I'll move to the next vial and start with 0.2 ml. It will take a total of 35 days to get him to vial #4 which has the maintenance dose of the serum. He'll get 0.5 ml of that vial each week indefinitely.

Since he had so many new reactions this time, I'm thinking it might not have mattered that I stopped giving him the doses of the old serum. He might have broken out anyway. Even so, I'm going to follow the instructions and keep him on this maintenance dose forever.

Or until he has another epic hive breakout.