Life after milk allergy: Catching up with Brett Nasuti

When Brett Nasuti was an infant, he was constantly breaking out in hives. His arms, legs, and even his face were always covered in small, itchy bumps. In fact, by the time he was a few months old, Brett’s mother Robyn had taken to cutting the ends off socks and sewing them over the arms of his baby clothes, so his budding fingernails didn’t scratch his skin raw. There were doctor visits and quick fix remedies, but nothing seemed to help for very long. At eight months, Brett was given cow’s milk for the first time—with awful results.  “He just started throwing up all over the place,” Robyn remembers. “It was terrible.” Two months later, Brett was at Boston Children’s Hospital for an unrelated issue, but while there, a nurse recommended Brett get tested for food allergy. When the results came back, the cause of his eczema and stomach problems were clear. “The tests showed he was ‘one hundred plus’ on the allergy scale,” Robyn says. “At that point, it all made sense. I thought back to months earlier where sometimes after I kissed him on his cheek, he would get hives in the shape of my lips. Turns out it was milk on my lips from coffee I had hours before. That’s how sensitive his system was to dairy.” For the next several years, Robyn went through what many parents of children with severe food allergies go through—she learned as much as she could about the condition, adapted her family̵...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: Milk allergies Our patients’ stories Source Type: news