Why I’m Glad My Son Had a Peanut Reaction
I'm still haunted by last week's news about the 13-year-old girl who died in her father's arms after accidentally eating peanut butter. Natalie Giorgi mistakenly took a bite of a peanut butter Rice Krispie treat while at a California campground with her family. She died of cardiac arrest shortly after. The story is beyond heartbreaking and, as a mother to a kid with a severe peanut allergy, scary as hell.
A lot of people mentioned Natalie's story to my husband, Nick, and me. He and I have talked about it a ton. And we've thought about it even more. Our five-year-old son, Alex, is allergic to peanuts. We found out when he was 11 months old, fortunately before he'd had the chance to eat any (Nick touched him after touching peanuts and he broke out into hives). We had him tested and his allergy was as high as it gets for peanuts. Turned out he was also allergic to milk, eggs, oats, soy, shrimp, almonds and cashews, which helped explain his eczema. The kid was basically a soy-free vegan for the first two years of his life (that was fun!) but we've had him retested several times and he's outgrown all but the nuts and shrimp. And only peanuts are life-threatening. (We ultimately took him to Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mt Sinai in New York City, which I highly recommend). Having a kid with a peanut allergy requires some extra planning and paperwork and lots of EpiPens and vigilance, but we've been lucky so mostly it's just been a bummer for Al ("Why am I the only one in the family who can't eat peanuts?" he often asks. Or, "Mom, is peanut butter really delicious?"). Still, he's incredibly responsible about it, never eating anything new without asking about the ingredients. And even if you assure him something is fine, he'll often turn it down "just in case, mom."
Other than the occasional mild and unexplained hives over the years, we'd been incident free. And because of that, we'd grown a little lax. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but we would occasionally forget to bring an EpiPen with us when we left the house (locally), or forget to ask what kind of oil something was fried in before he started eating. Then, a few months ago, he had a reaction to something he ate at a birthday party and wound up in the emergency room. It was time for cupcakes and I asked my friend about the ingredients--they came from a local bakery (one that does use nuts) but the cupcakes themselves were just chocolate. I let Alex have one. A few minutes later he complained of a stomachache and we went to the bathroom. He started crying. He never cries. He clutched his stomach. The party was just about over so we headed home. He whimpered in the car but he was OK. When we got home, he changed into comfortable clothes and lied on the couch. He started coughing. Then I took off his shirt and noticed hives climbing up his back. Nick and I immediately knew what it was. Alex got nervous when he heard us say hospital and that made his breathing worse. I didn't give him an EpiPen because we live about three minutes from the hospital so it made more sense to me to go there and have the doctor see him first--and I really didn't want him to endure the trauma of being stabbed by his mother with a giant needle if we could avoid it. Nick drove (too fast) to the ER and I talked Alex into calming down so his breathing evened. The nurses pulled him right into a room, quickly evaluated him and the doctor calmly gave him shots of epinephrine and Benadryl and another steroid. He took it all like a champ.
And as scary as that was, it was the best thing that could have happened to us. Because it was a good reminder that a food allergy is serious. That anything can be contaminated with peanuts (we're still not sure what it was, he also ate some chocolate-covered popcorn but those ingredients were listed and none had peanuts). And that we should never, ever, not ever leave the house without an EpiPen on us (we did have one with us that time). I haven't seen a clear report of if/when epinephrine was administered to Natalie Giorgi--some reports say she got a few doses but that maybe it was too late. Seeing how fast the meds worked on Alex in the ER--literally within in a minute his symptoms had subsided--was another realization of just how important these epinephrine shots are to people with food allergies. Since that day, we've all been more vigilant about the allergy. We restocked my families' EpiPens (they all keep one at their houses), we alerted his schools (they are great, but it felt like a good reminder), we told friends. And we talked a lot about it with Alex. We obviously won't be telling him about Natalie's tragic story but knowing about it ourselves has served as another reminder of the severity of what we're dealing with. Which is what Natalie's parents wanted:
"While our hearts are breaking over the tragic loss of our beautiful daughter Natalie, it is our hope that others can learn from this and realize that nut and food allergies are life threatening. Caution and care for those inflicted should always be supported and taken."
Anyone else have food allergies in their family? How do you handle it?