My teenage son has suffered from severe asthma and allergies for most of his life. We have visited…read morenumerous doctors including paediatricians, ENT specialists, allergists and dermatologists but none of them were really able to help my son. He had skin tests where his back was scratched and various allergens were applied to his back in an attempt to determine what he was allergic to and what triggered his asthma. He also had blood drawn to conduct tests on it for the same purpose. He even had an endoscopy to find out why he vomited often when he coughed. None of those tests were conclusive so we remained in the dark for years about his asthma and allergies.
He used a nebulizer, steroids, inhalers, allergy and asthma medication etc. to treat the symptoms but no doctor helped us to find out the cause of his asthma and allergies.
It became really serious when his asthma and allergies became so bad that he had a hacking cough for a while. The school kept calling me to pick him up and take him home since they thought he had covid or some other contagious illness. All his covid antigen test results were negative. Still, we had to get forms filled by his doctors explaining that he was cot contagious but that he had severe asthma and allergies. At one point, after he had missed 2 weeks of school and visited the latest paediatrician many times during the course of those 2 weeks, the paediatrician informed that she had done all she could do so we should find another doctor.
The doctors on the list emailed to us by Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO either were not taking new patients or were no longer accepting Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO. My doctor's office referred us to an allergist who had 38 years of experience only to find out that, when we called the number my doctor's office gave us, said allergist, Dr. Ziv Harish, had already retired 2.5 years ago. We called other doctors and they were fully booked until June 2023!
Finally, just by chance, I happened to mention our predicament to one of the kind doormen in our building. He informed me that his girlfriend also suffered from severe asthma and allergies. She had also tried many, many doctors before she finally found one that she was happy with since he genuinely cared about treating the root causes of her ailments. That doctor was Dr. Mathew Varghese, MD, of the Northern Valley Allergy and Sinus Center.
Usually, our experience in visiting doctors is that, after getting over the initial hurdle of getting an appointment, we wait for at least an hour but often much longer in the waiting room filling out many forms and then are whisked into an examination where a doctor asks a few questions and does a cursory inspection for all of 10 to 15 minutes. Then we are whisked out where we actually spend more time paying the co-payment than we did during the consultation with the doctor.
Not so with Dr. Mathew Varghese, MD, and his Assistant, Elianey, of the Northern Valley Allergy and Sinus Center, where our doctor's visit lasted 3 hours! After filling out detailed forms asking many questions about my son's condition and about his/our family medical history, we met with his Assistant, Elianey, who asked us more questions while reviewing the forms we had completed. She performed skin and breathing tests. Then, Dr. Varghese looked at the results of his Assistant's tests on my son. Whereupon, after checking my son's back to see which allergens had caused a reaction, he took a long tube with a light on the end of it and inspected my son's nostrils and concluded that my son was indeed allergic to many things since his nostrils were inflamed. His Assistant used swabs to get specimens from my son's nostrils to do a nose culture test.
Thereafter, Dr. Mathew Varghese, MD, prepared customised inoculations to give my son to build up his resistance to allergens and strengthen his immune system. Finally, doctor and his team willing and able to treat my son's asthma and allergies by identifying and tackling the root causes of his ailments with weekly allergy and asthma shots by Elianey.
- Thank you so very much, Dr. Mathew Vargese and Elianey!
- Thank you also to our wonderful and helpful doorman, Stephen and his girlfriend, Francesa, for referring us to Dr. Mathew Varghese and his team at Northern Valley Allergy and Sinus Center!
