Your issues sound very familiar. My son is now 11 (almost 12) and has a severe milk allergy. However, when he was young we were a lot more cavalier about things. While I wouldn't scrape the cheese off the pizza, I took a lot more risks with cross-contamination and not thoroughly checking ingredients.
As we learned more about reactions and understood the seriousness of them, my behaviors changed. The severity of his reactions seems to have to do with how much of an allergen he gets, how quickly we treat the reaction and what else is going on in his body at the time. That's why it's hard to know on any given day if your child is going to have trouble with the cheese you scrape off the pizza. Plus, many on this board do believe that total avoidance is the way to go if you want your child to outgrow the allergy. I will tell you that my son has had very serious reactions to what seems like very small amounts of milk to me.
We do not avoid milk totally in our house, as I have a second child without milk allergy. I don't believe it's healthy for her to do without milk. However, we do have rules about where she can have the milk (only at the table) and about teasing with food. Most of our family meals are milk-free, but there are times when Sabrina has a friend over and we make them a pizza. I think it's important to balance the needs of your children - otherwise, you end up with a child who resents all the sacrifices she had to make for her brother. That's not fair either.
We have a dishwasher with a high heat cycle to help ensure any protein on plates is degraded, and we do thorough rinse dishes with milk or peanut butter using different sponges.
Your child's reactions do sound more serious than you may think they are. I suggest you talk to your doctor and learn as much as you can so you can better assess the risk. "Milk allergy" can mean many different things and involve many different proteins, so it's best to get your information from an expert.

i just wanted to put in my 2 cents about my sons dairy allergy.
we also just peel the cheese off the pizza and it dosnt bother him at all. however his dairy allergy is a pretty mild one and we have the freedom to do that.
erin

This is so interesting to me, since every parent and every allergist have a different approach. My ds was diagnosed at 5 mos and he's now 3. Mild symptoms for the most part - hives with contact and runny nose/sneezing with ingestion, but very sensitive and reacts quickly. He's had some accidental exposures, one big one (3oz of drinkable yogurt) and his RAST has stayed the same, around 2.4 kU/L. We strictly avoid with him...no pizza deliveries. We do, however, have milk in our house and we use it occasionally in meals. Like burrito night, we use cheese chunks (not shredded - too messy) for the rest of the family and he just doesn't. I am alittle lax about "may contains" since this new law came out. If he had the items without incidence previously but now they slapped a warning on it, I still give it to him. But I am not this way for peanuts, nuts or eggs. I'm very strict about none of these in my house, even in prepackaged items that my dh eats at work.

My son's milk allergy has been dropping over the years. The highest was at the age of 2, he had a CAP RAST of 31. Last June at the age of 6, he a CAP RAST of 2. He's now at the stage where he can eat most things w/ milk in it, including small amounts of ice-cream and yogurt. But he can't drink milk or eat uncooked cheese. He's been eating like this for the last 2 years and my allergist has been fine w/ it.
When he was 3, I used to peel the cheese off the pizza. Now he can eat the pizza. Although I do notice that after eating pizza for 3 days in a row (He loves pizza), that he scratches his arms a little bit more.
By the way, he is anaphylactic to peanuts and nuts, and I would NEVER consider giving him anything w/ even a microscopic amount of peanut in it.

Reraising for Sheryl--just because there is some good info here, and people also ask some interesting questions.

I would ask the allergist about it. I wouldn't take a chance because hives all over sounds serious and can get worse. There are things I was taking chances with too but then realized that maybe I was just lucky. People tell me all the time that me and DS have been eating it and has been fine. That doesn't mean anything.
My friend took chances with her PA child and they were fine for 5 years and he had 2 allergic reactions within one year after that. The last reaction his throat swelled. Milk allergies can be life threatening too.
The problem is that people that take chances are not always going to react unless the actual protien is in the food. We can't tell and that confuses people.
It makes me wonder about the kids who are allergic and are so quick to take a bite out a cookie that they are unsure of and have a fatal reaction, if they did not do it before and were lucky. Which is very scary.
We learn as we go. Good luck and be safe.
[This message has been edited by momll70 (edited April 01, 2007).]

Hi Chandra,
We have milk allergy here and other allergies as well. I strongly urge you to take the milk allergy as seriously as you do peanut. A food allergy means it is potentially life-threatening. Past reactions do not tell us what future reactions will be like. They can give us only a general idea but people can go from previously having only very minor reactions to having a life-threatening reaction on the very next exposure and there is no way to tell to whom this will happen. We have to treat an allergy as potentially life-threatening as a result and to avoid exposure as totally as possible.
A lot RAST test does not mean a person won't have a reaction that is serious. My son's milk #s are about the same as yours and he is still allergic to milk. The fact that your son's #s are going down is a good sign but it doesn't guarantee a small reaction. There are people who test negative and yet have life-threatening reactions to foods.
As for serious reaction--what you described *is* serious. If my son ingested his allergens and had severe stomach pain, diarrhea and lip/mouth swelling I would give the epi and call 911 at once. Please see my other post here about GI reactions being more closely associated with fatal anaphylaxis than other types of reactions. Do you have an emergency plan from your allergist that tells you for which symptoms to give the epi?
I can't look back at the thread right now but I think you said that your allergist told you to try to avoid milk/dairy the best you can but not that it can be life-threatening. I might talk with another allergist. All food allergies can be life-threatening. That is what a food allergy means.
I can understand what you are saying about your family not wanting to change and not understanding why you are suddenly wanting to be more careful. Tell them that food allergies involve a long learning curve and now you know more and know that it isn't safe for your child to be exposed to *any* dairy, even a little bit because reactions can change from one exposure to the next and your child does have potentially life-threatening allergies to dairy. Also, your child has had serious reactions that should have received the epi according to *my* child's food allergy emergency plan.
Good luck!

Quote:Originally posted by Carefulmom:
[b]Cap rasts are very inaccurate unless done at one of two labs. Hugh Sampson did a study where they sent cap rasts on the same patient but under a different name to the same lab. The results varied widely. There were only two labs where the results were consistent within the same lab. So imagine having blood on your child sent to the same lab under three different names and you get three different results. Very inaccurate. Recently dd had blood sent for cap rast to two different labs (long story why, I need to start a thread on this when I have time) and the results were so different it was mind boggling.[/b]
Do you know which two labs he recommends?