I don't think that Maeve and I actually disagree on this one. We just have different kids. Um-- and different docs, too.
I'd TELL him that the doc wants you to all
try this, and then I'd offer regular small doses in something that you know he likes. Make it clear that sometimes things may have
little amounts of egg and sometimes they won't. That way he KNOWS that you're doing this, and he consents to it ahead of time. This is very important-- I agree completely with Maeve about TRICKING kids into double blinding.
Make it clear that you will ALWAYS listen and won't force him to eat things he doesn't want to eat. If he doesn't want to do it at all, though, be sure to mention that you will need to talk to the doctor about it because it's what your doctor has asked you to do (well, it sort of is-- it's actually far more conservative than what you've been told to do!).
Make something (cake mix made into minimuffins and frozen in batches?) with eggs
and without them-- and pay close attention to whether or not he complains if he's eating eggy stuff and does NOT complain when he isn't. Respect him if he refuses something, and make a note of it. Start on the "no eggs" side of things-- if he develops psychosomatic symptoms, it'll be REALLY obvious, and you can talk it over with him, and reassure him that he wasn't eating anything with eggs. (Does that part make sense?) After a while, if it seems to be going smoothly, you can tell him that he's successfully eaten some egg in a few things, and ask if it seems okay to him to do that.
When I say "brownies" by the way, I definitely do NOT mean the standard way of making them, or the way that purchased brownies are (moist/chewy)-- mine are thinner, they are cooked longer (
all the way through), and every one is identical because I make them as minimuffins.
I really recommend the mini-muffin route if you can. That way all of the doses are more or less the same, and it's easy to make a few as egg-free "controls" before you put the eggs into the batter. I like brownie mix better than cake mix because the leavening produced by making them with 1/2 portions of eggs doesn't make much difference to the texture or taste, unlike cake mixes. Minimuffins are also less sensitive to a lack of egg giving them away as different because of increased fragility.
I do disagree a BIT with allowing a child to
decide whether or not they want to continue avoidance, at least hard-core avoidance. Maeve does NOT avoid may contains anymore for her DD, as she noted.
My reasoning is about overall risk-benefit, though-- with a teen, they ARE going to take risks that they shouldn't, and I figure regular dosing with a low-enough-to-be-asymptomatic amount of an allergen is an
insurance policy. It's the best I can do in terms of decreasing risk during this next decade. For another thing, asking OTHERS to make accommodations for you when you aren't doing what you can to mitigate things on your own end is just not okay with our family, and on some level, this crosses over into that territory. So if dosing with egg means that your child's science class can safely use educational materials that they would otherwise have to avoid, then that DOES play a role in our decision-making. Medical considerations being more or less equal, I mean. (And they aren't always-- I'm DEFINITELY not advocating pushing through symptoms that seem dangerous or scary to either parents or children. Absolutely NOT.)
I definitely understand respecting a child's decisions about his/her own body. BUT... I also don't think that most children or adolescents are yet capable of understanding that larger picture and its ramifications down the road... this is one that has consequences in terms of ability to live away from home for college, how risky dating is, how much accommodation they'll need in entry-level jobs, etc. So some pretty serious things are riding on how low that threshold is when they are 15-25yo. Lower threshold = more danger, less freedom. Similarly, I didn't "respect" my child's desire to remain unimmunized or go without dental care.
I do rather wish that more allergists were sensitive to parents' and children's fears and concerns about such high dosages when starting out, though. I think it would be MUCH easier if more parents had the option of doing what we did-- there is NO way that I could have gone through with dosing at 1/8th of an egg. Pretty sure that I couldn't do it
now. That seems like an enormous amount to me, and my DD has been dosed with egg daily for
years at this point.
Nope, we challenged with 1/40th of an egg over a period of five hours, and then started dosing with 1/90th. Symptoms were mild enough that we never felt uneasy about doing it. That just wouldn't have been true starting with the kinds of doses that most people challenge with. I mean, I get that "a lot" is ideal tolerance-- but "a little teeny bit" seems a whole lot better than "nothing" which is the likely outcome if you make it all or nothing. Our goal has never been to force NORMAL tolerance in the first place. Just to increase the threshold dose enough to reduce risk significantly.
I can't understand why more allergists don't "get" that this is a completely WORTHY goal all by itself.
Bummer, that. Maybe they aren't living it?
Anyway. Felt the need to qualify what I was saying there. You know now that anaphylaxis is REALLY unlikely from very small doses. That's a GREAT thing. So exploit that and make sure that it stays that way. That's all I was suggesting-- be cautious because it seems like he could still be allergic beyond some threshold dose, maybe even be MORE cautious than the doc thinks is warranted to give yourselves a buffer in case of other allergen overload, or illness. Maeve and I both agree wholeheartedly there-- doc doesn't live with your child or know him like you do.