It feels weird to give a four-star rating and officially state I'm a fan of a place that tortured me. I don't have Stockholm syndrome, it's just that allergy testing is unpleasant and the staff here did the best they could to make it as painless as possible.
Sinus issues drove me here. I was assigned an appointment time which happened to fall on my birthday. At the time car-less, I took a bus from Toowong Village, and it was a quick and easy ride. When I arrived they explained what allergy testing is, then did it. It involves your skin being pricked by a needle in two long lines across your inner forearm; then the 40 or so resulting pin pricks on the skin are splashed by various liquids from various containers - each representing a common allergy-inducing animal or plant. Then you have to sit there and let the potion seep in for about 20 minutes. (I think the only time I ever got so itchy before was when I had chickenpox.) The nurse then measures the size of each inflammation to determine whether you're allergic and to what extent.
I turned out to be allergic to literally everything - a range of Australian grasses, cockroaches, cats, dogs and the big one - dust. (Whereas most of my allergic responses were 4mm in diameter, the dust test resulted in swelling of 14mm in diameter.)
My nurse was pragmatic and likeable. The conversation about what I could do to cope went like this:
Nurse: ... as to the Australian grasses, I'd just...
Me: Not roll in the grass?
Nurse: Yeah, try to restrain yourself. And you know what you can do about dust?
Me: Absolutely nothing?
Nurse: Right.
After this she explained a range of other options, such as immunotherapy, involving monthly medical exposures to the allergy potions for a year or two. We both agreed it wasn't worth it.
Sullivan Nicolaides operates in a bit of a unique market, and as a business I'm pretty sure they have no equal. The Taringa centre also offers services such as paternity testing, DNA testing ("Legal and Peace of Mind"), bone marrow procedures and a wide range of tests and services targeted at children's health. read more