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I got an Ink + Volt planner for this year (which mocks me every day with its reminders to check my monthly and yearly goals), and it has a X-day challenge every month. I've done German every day (twice), PT or stretching every day, and that sort of thing, so this month, I'm going to write an entry here every day. I miss longer-form social media and being able to interact with people, in this day of more ephemeral sites like twitter and tumblr.
Today I actually had an interesting experience. When I got up to Maryland, I signed up for health insurance through Kaiser Permanente. A few days later, I got a call from the allergy clinic, asking whether I wanted to take part in their program to see if I'm still allergic to penicillin. They got some money to run this protocol on new patients who listed a penicillin allergy in their charts. I said sure, why not, and my appointment was this afternoon.
The procedure is as follows: 1) a scratch test on the forearm with histamine (positive control), saline (negative control), pre-pen, and pen G. If that is negative, you advance to step 2: a repeat of the above, but intradermal injection instead. A negative result on that gets you to step 3: an oral challenge of 250 mg amoxicillin. If step 1 or 2 is positive, the protocol stops there. It takes 2 hours, because they watch you for an hour after the oral challenge to make sure you don't react.
So, as it turns out, I'm not allergic to penicillin anymore. According to the doc, the literature doesn't suggest any future resensitization following use of penicillins, so the likelihood of redeveloping an allergy is very low.
Today I actually had an interesting experience. When I got up to Maryland, I signed up for health insurance through Kaiser Permanente. A few days later, I got a call from the allergy clinic, asking whether I wanted to take part in their program to see if I'm still allergic to penicillin. They got some money to run this protocol on new patients who listed a penicillin allergy in their charts. I said sure, why not, and my appointment was this afternoon.
The procedure is as follows: 1) a scratch test on the forearm with histamine (positive control), saline (negative control), pre-pen, and pen G. If that is negative, you advance to step 2: a repeat of the above, but intradermal injection instead. A negative result on that gets you to step 3: an oral challenge of 250 mg amoxicillin. If step 1 or 2 is positive, the protocol stops there. It takes 2 hours, because they watch you for an hour after the oral challenge to make sure you don't react.
So, as it turns out, I'm not allergic to penicillin anymore. According to the doc, the literature doesn't suggest any future resensitization following use of penicillins, so the likelihood of redeveloping an allergy is very low.
