pecan allergy testing, aka a trip to the torture chamber

Today was the dreaded trip to the allergist's for the pecan open food challenge. These are pecans. Who doesn't love pecans? I would pay a doctor to let me come in and eat pecans for 4 hours. Yes, you read correctly. We were in the allergist's office for 4 LONG hours trying to eat what must have amounted to about 20 pecans. I could eat that many in about 3 mouthfuls. Not Mac. He whined and cried and gagged and tried to throw up. It was embarrassing.

I tried to be patient. We had about three nurses attending us and you have to be on your best parental behavior with that much supervision. So there was no threatening, no yelling, no nothing. I was a model mother. I told him there was nothing to be scared about, that he tested as low for pecans as he did for peanuts and he breezed through the peanut challenge, etc. I explained that he had a choice in this test: he could eat the pecans and keep that beloved DSi or he could not eat the pecans and lose the DSi. I told him I'd buy him a new DSi game if he'd just eat the pecans.

He kept saying he was scared. At this point, we'd killed almost an hour and I was done and was losing patience. And I knew he was playing us. But one of the nurses didn't and she tried to use all this psychological talk about why he was scared, did he really think we'd allow anything to happen to him, they were trained professionals, etc. PUH-lease. I didn't fall off the turnip truck of Mac Story's manipulations yesterday. I wanted to tell her she was wasting her breath, but that didn't seem very "mother of the year"-ish, so I let her go on and then told him the time had come to make a decision about which consequence he wanted. DSi or no DSi. Because that's what it came down to.

He was supposed to have 5 rounds of increasing quantities of pecans with 15 minutes between each round. He made it through 4.5 and then refused to eat the last 1/2 batch. I told him no new game, he said fine, so I knew he was really done. He'd had no reaction thus far and the doctor declared him pecan allergy-free. I have never seen a chocolate chip cookie with more than 20 pecans in it, so I'm thinking this diagnosis was correct.

We're still supposed to go back for the walnut challenge, but I need to be medicated before we do that. Today was very stressful. Perhaps the walnut test could be a good father-son bonding experience on one of Jimmy's trips back home? He'll have seen all sorts of war things, so a 6 year-old's hissy fit will be nothing. What do you think?