Inside a Peanut and Nut Allergic Family

Peanut ButterMmmm.... Peanut butter! A school lunch staple, perfect paired with chocolate in candy at Halloween, yummy in a pie for the holidays, and potentially deadly to my daughters.

I discovered my daughter's severe nut allergy at age 2. We have lots of allergies in our family so the pediatrician recommended holding off on having her try nuts of any kind until she turned 4, which we carefully did. After a family dinner one evening she bit into a delicious oatmeal raisin cookie brought by a family member and immediately spit it out. "Don't want this! Mommy it hurts," she said as she pointed to her tongue which was already beginning to swell. I grabbed the package of cookies and there it was, "Oatmeal, Raisin, Walnut". I knew immediately what was happening. By the time I ran to the bathroom and returned with the Benadryl my little girls lips were swelling and she was clearing her throat repeatedly. I gave her a double dose of the medicine, made her rinse her mouth and sat waiting with the phone in my hand. Thank goodness we caught it so quickly and she spit out the one bite she took because the Benadyl was enough to halt the reaction.

The next week was a blur. Heading from one appointment to the next, pediatrician to allergist and back again. Blood tests, exams and lots of tears later, there we sat in the allergist's office with the test results staring us in the face. Every single nut tested had allergen levels that were off the charts. Our allergist stressed that these were some of the highest levels she had ever seen and that we would need to be hyper vigilant. Avoiding the danger of restaurants, no baked good due to cross contamination risks, nut-free classrooms and peanut-free tables in the future, a completely nut-free home.... These were just a few of her recommendations. We were presribed an Epi-Pen Jr. which is injectable Epinephrine used in the event of an allergic reaction and kept with us at all times. As I drove home with my little girl and her newborn sister I imagined all the ways that our life would be different and much more difficult and stressful than it had been before this diagnosis.

Fast forward 4 years. My daughter is now 6 years old and is healthy and happy, but also feeling her allergy to nuts permeate all aspects of her life. At age 4 we took her sister to be tested and she too is allergic to all nuts, although not quite so severely. We have a nut free home and every product purchased for consumption is checked every single time for nut ingredients or "made in a factory with nuts" warnings. My older daughter's allergies are so severe that a product being manufactured in a facility with nuts may be contaminated enough to set off an anaphylactic reaction. The FDA does not require all products to be labeled if they are produced in a facility with nuts which means calling or searching online any new product I'd like to feed to my family. I have to home make almost all our food so thank goodness I enjoy cooking! I learned to decorate cakes so my girls could still have fun and pretty birthday cakes since purchasing one in a bakery is out due to the always present risk of cross contamination with nutty products baked there. Many of the usual places kids love we have to avoid or modify to be able to enjoy them. Imagine not being able to go out for ice cream on a hot summer day? Well, due to the nuts everyone at most ice cream shops we cannot even think about entering one. Even those that claim to be safe don't realize that scopping a nutty ice cream and rinsing the scopp, then scooping a safe ice cream is enough to cause send my daughters to the hospital. Restaurants are not relaxing and are not somewhere we go often. Explaining to the waiter that my daughters have life-threatening allergies to nuts and asking them to please take care in preparation of their food as to not come in contact with nuts inevitably comes back with, "But the fries and burgers don't have nuts in them." That's when we have to walk out and that's why almost all our meals are eaten at home. Chinese takeout on a busy day? No way with the cross contamination risks and the language barrier.

School is a new challenge. Thank goodness for the understanding teachers and administrators at my daughters' schools, but it has been stressful. Other parents with their children starting kindergarten for the first time are worried about them feeling comfortable, finding their classroom, and making friends. I'm writing up "allergy action plans", drafting notes to the nurse, teachers and administrators, making allergist and testing appointments and getting prescriptions filled. Although I am confident that everyone wants what's best for my daughters at school, every single day I send them off I wonder if I will get a call telling me to meet my daughter at the hospital. What a horrible thing for a mother to feel, and even worse for a child to worry about. My older daughter eats at the "peanut-free" table with friends which is wonderful now, but how will children treat her when she's older and it's teasing time? Her classroom is nut-free but birthday and class parties are still allowed and home baked goods of any kind are out for her due to to possibility of someone baking in their home which could potentially have nuts around. I send in her own cupcake for each birthday celebration, decorated a little extra special just to make her feel special herself. I am usually the "class mom" and do the baking myself to ensure safety and minimimize inconvenience for the other parents, but that can cause resentment. "How come I can't be the class mom. How come I can't bake this time." You try to make it easy on the parents, yet safe for your daughter and they still may be upset.

I'm not overprotective. I'm not a "helicopter parent" or a control freak. If your child had the potential to be exposed to a deadly poison every day, everywhere, would you want to do all you could to make them safe? If that means that I have to ask family not to make cookies with nuts in them at holiday parties or let me bake for school functions, or ask friends not to have nutty snacks at a play date, I don't think that is too much to ask. My daughters are 4 and 6 and they cannot just avoid biting into a friends pb and j sandwich and they will be fine. Cross contamination and contact occurs SO easily that we must all be vigilant when there is an allergic child. My oldest daughter's most recent reaction happened after playing with a ball in the pocket on someone who had a package of peanuts in there hours earlier. The ball must have had a minute amount of peanut dust on it, my daughter touched it, then ate a safe food. 2 minutes later she was violently vomiting and had a dangerous drop in blood pressure. You cannot imagine what it is like to see your child like that and know that it takes only the tiniest bit of an unseen substance to cause that reaction.... or worse.

Please consider what a family of an allergic child goes through and especially what that child goes through before you find it inconvenient not to be able to pack a pb and j for school or not be able to bake for class. These are kids... let's come together and keep them safe! And thank you to those that understand and accomodate these allergic kids. I know that my daughters and our family appreciates and never forgets these friends.