Frightening Food Allergies

WARNING: 
World May Contain Nuts
When your child has a life-threatening 
food allergy, every kindness counts.
By Paula Allison

“Mommy, my throat feels hot.” These words, issued by our 3-year-old daughter only seconds after taking a bite of candy, sent my husband and me into a panic. We whisked her to the car, poured Benadryl down her throat, drove to our house, and hoisted her up on our kitchen counter. As her throat closed, and she could no longer swallow, saliva poured down her little chin. My husband grabbed for the EpiPen.

This was the first time we had to use the EpiPen, a shot filled with adrenaline to keep airways open during an anaphylactic reaction. Fumbling with the container, my husband accidentally shot his thumb (it would be white for three weeks). He ran and got another EpiPen. This time, no misfires. He was able to inject our daughter, and she was able to breathe.

We discovered our daughter’s life-threatening allergy to peanuts when she was just 18 months old (her face blew up after a single bite of Thai food). Now a thriving 8-year-old, our daughter has learned how to live in a world with nuts, and luckily we have had only minor incidents since that day with the mislabeled candy. It is a big responsibility for a kid, but she handles it very maturely. If a classmate is eating something with nuts, she moves out of harm’s way. At restaurants, she asks waiters how food is prepared. Still, you can imagine how hard it is to be the kid at a birthday party who can never eat cake, or the one on the soccer team who sometimes has to skip the treat. (We try to keep non-nutty treats at the ready for situations like these.)

Parents with allergic kids understand what a hassle all this can be for non-allergic kids and their families. Frankly, until it touched our family, we thought the whole food allergy fuss was insane. All this freaking out over a little peanut butter?! But for our daughter, a peanut butter sandwich is literally as deadly as a loaded gun. My husband and I have learned how to be prepared and, just like other parents of a child with a medical condition, we have had to educate ourselves and others on how to protect our kid (and the millions like her). As she has grown, we have also had to realize that we must rely on other people to help keep our daughter safe. People in our community, especially kids, are terrific, going out of their way to protect her, and for that, we are extremely grateful.

Paula L. Allison is a local mother of two and Executive Director of Allison Consulting, A Prof. Law Corp.