4. Has your allergist — using numbers and facts — told you the odds of success or failure?
If it’s a clinical trial or experimental treatment, it means they are still testing their ideas and more research needs to be done to determine if it will (or won’t) become a useful treatment that is accepted by the larger medical community. Has your allergist explained what researchers know, and what questions they are still trying to answer?
5. What will happen to you if the treatment doesn’t work?
If you travel home from your final appointment with the news that it hasn’t worked, what type of conversation will happen in your car or transit? Will you take a balanced view of the results, or feel an embittered sense of lost hope? Are you ready for your child’s tough questions? Ready to go back to the way things were?
6. How hopeful is your child?
What if you are a hopeful parent with a pragmatic child, or a pragmatic parent with a hopeful child? How will you reconcile these differences?
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