Hi. I apologize if this is the wrong place for this thread. I'm really not good with forums and haven't used one in a long time and I tried my best to figure out where this question should go.
I have peanut, tree nut, and egg allergies; I went through desensitizing to egg and several food challenges as a kid, but my peanut and tree nut allergies are both still very severe. (Not all tree nuts, but it's easier to just group them together.) My son is 2 and for the first two years of his life we thought that he didn't seem to have inherited any predisposition to allergies; mine became clear when I was 9 months old, but he's been exposed to some tree nuts, eggs, milk, soy, etc. without any issue since he was about the same age. All top 8 I believe, except for peanut, because I cannot have it anywhere in the house. I may be wrong and my spouse has given it to him while I was away for a weekend though. I would have to ask and they are at work right now.
For the last 6 months or so he's been getting "mystery rashes" around his mouth-- they look exactly like hives. I did my best to figure out the pattern in what was giving him the hives/rashes and it seems to be tomato products. Similarly acidic foods with no tomato content never bother him, which I checked because I thought maybe it was just the acid bothering his skin, but every time he has anything with tomato as a primary ingredient it happens. Tomato juice gives him horrific diaper rash (sorry if that's TMI), marinara sauce gives him the hives, ketchup gives him the hives, pizza rolls give him the hives, those chef boyardee ravioli cups with the tomato-beef sauce give him the hives, etc.
First question: I'm obviously going to address this with his doctor, but he doesn't have an appointment for another month and a half and it doesn't exactly feel urgent enough to call and request we schedule another so early. Am I underreacting? Should I be calling in and insisting he come in? I feel like I might have a skewed sense of what's appropriate here given my own experience with allergies-- if he were experiencing anaphylaxis I would of course call, but as far as I can tell, he only has one symptom at a time and it's never terribly severe. The last time (the incident that clinched my opinion he may well have an allergy) he had chicken nuggets and ketchup and he was in obvious distress and seemed very uncomfortable. I gave him some kids' Benadryl and he seemed to feel better within about 30 minutes and then went to sleep. He's mostly nonverbal still, and I can't really ask him about other symptoms besides what's obviously presented, but I've listened to his breathing and that seems okay. We have a great rapport with his doctor and I don't want her to blow me off when I bring this up thinking I'm a panicked hypochondriac, yknow?
Second question, we've stopped giving him any food with tomatoes in it at all to the best of our ability. Barbecue sauce and other things with tomato as an ingredient but not a primary one don't seem to bother him, but I know that nut allergies can sometimes worsen if you keep pushing exposure even if it seems okay based on your threshold. Is it the same for allergies to other foods? Am I overreacting on this one, at least until we talk to his doctor? He absolutely loves barbecue sauce, so I don't want to deprive him unnecessarily.
Related third question, if anyone has advice for toddler-friendly, shelf stable foods for a kind of strict budget that don't have tomatoes, that would be great. I used to hide veggies in marinara sauce because he'll eat anything if it has tomato sauce or ketchup or barbecue sauce on it. We ate tomato products basically every day. Now I can't do that, obviously. We only have a mini-fridge in the apartment we're in right now and while I work from home, my job is stressful + I often don't have time or energy to cook and be a good parent to a toddler in every other respect. We really can't afford for me to buy fresh veggies and make our own tomato-free sauces and etc. every week. I'm already looking at teriyaki sauce, soy sauce, jarred cheese and alfredo sauce, etc. It's not exactly an emergency request or anything, but I thought that if anyone here has tomato allergies you might have some advice.
Thank you.