Soy allergy also for Jenson?

Tomorrow we're seeing an allergy specialist to do some testing as we're suspecting a serious soy allergy for Jenson in addition to histiocytosis.

Flashback to prior to starting chemo in August: We went through a period in June-July 2009 where he was vomiting regularly and we kept telling the doctors something was wrong. At first they just thought it was a bad virus and other minor things before we forced the issue to be seen by a GI doctor because we knew the way he was vomiting wasn't just a little spit up, but very abnormal given he'd act fine then vomit and then act fine again. At the time they asked about allergies and we indicated none. Then he started the chemo in August and outside of the vomiting from feeling nauseous (and yes we could tell the difference believe it or not) the unusual vomiting stopped about 4 weeks into treatment.

In October he then had a relapse where a similar thing happened... he went to bed fine and woke up vomiting and with petechia dots all over his head. As we thought back on the time, that day I feed Jenson some edaname hummus (soybean hummus) which was something he'd had before he started chemo also but hadn't had for a while.

I then remembered we had switched his formula from cow's milk to soy around April/May 2009 and it really didn't seem to agree with his system as he got a lot more gas and just seemed more uncomfortable. June was when the vomiting had started.

We obviously stopped feeding him the soybean hummus and soy formula (not having proof of an allergy but suspecting it might be related).

Then recently we realized soy is a filler for many food products (including cow's milk formula, most packaged goods like cookies and crackers, chocolate, packaged rice, most shelf stable breads, some hot dogs, many Gerber baby products like puffs or teething biscuits)... who knew!!! You should have seen me going through our cupboard and separating all the products with some type of soy from the others in shock.

Anyway, we decided given our strong suspision and that soy filler is in so many products it's time to see an allergy specialist to confirm our suspision and get tips on managing around it and other products/fillers that might contain it. After reading more on soy allergies, it's also common with that type of allergy to be allergic to other foods like legumes.

So, hopefully tomorrow we'll learn more. I'm sure it's going to be a difficult appointment as I've been through the allergy testing process before which involves many, many pricks and Jenson is going to think mommy and daddy have lost their minds that we're letting this happen to him.

Wish us luck!

Kristin