Skip to main content

The Food Allergy Mom's New 'All Nighter'

It is now just before midnight on a Saturday night and I am wide awake. I'd like to say that I'm channeling my more lighthearted side before children and partying the night away. But I'm not. No. Instead I am about to embark on another all nighter to monitor my son, Aiden. Tonight he went for a walk with his Nana (grandma) and his sister and no sooner reached the entrance to the park when he mysteriously tossed his cookies. The way you hear Nana describe it, he emptied his insides out to the point where she almost caught the cookie tossing bug. He's six years old so you may be thinking 'So What. Kids barf all the time.' Yep. However, in Aiden's case, throwing up is often the first thing he does when having a reaction to food.

Experts tell us that reactions can vary every time and I do believe them. Yet, with Aiden we have seen vomiting almost every single time. He is also one of those few have had biphasic reactions even as late as a day and half later. (It is considered rare but people can have biphasic reactions from 2 to 72 hours after exposure.) With Aiden, we saw one of his worst reactions to date consist of immediate, profuse vomiting followed by around 36 hours of perfectly normal behavior and no other symptoms. The biphasic reaction was actually the whammy with all the common anaphylaxis sysmptoms including swelling of the lips, hoarse voice, "ouchie tummy", and hives. (I would later discover that his sesame and flax seed cracker dipped in hommus was like handing my toddler a death snack. Turns out he is allergic to sesame, flax AND chickpea. I may forgive myself someday...) So having those experiences tends to make us VERY nervous any and every time he vomits. We always assume it is food related and we watch him for several days. 

Parenting, regardless of if your child has any health conditions or not, requires our involvement and awareness. We should know them better than most and sometimes, better than they know themselves. When you have a child who does have health issues you listen to the medical professionals but in turn, they listen to you because you are the one observing your child and sharing information with the doctors until your children can. The more emergency events you have, the more you are on alert and you are often the first person to figure out the patterns. If youve been in the Emergency Department before, you know that there are a ton of questions that will be asked and it isn't just about what insurance you have and when is their birthday. No. You'll be asked about their day. What did they eat? When did they eat last? What symptoms were they having? When did the symptoms first occur? Have they had those symptoms before? Who else lives in the house? Is anyone sick? Did you administer medication or epinephrine on your own? If so, how much and at what time? On and on and on... They have to and because you are the caregiver, they need you to be the one who was paying attention to help them get all of the information gathered to provide the best care for your child.

We keep a dry erase whiteboard in our kitchen. We've had it for several years now. It originated as a way to track meds but it has also come in handy to track the details that will be asked by the doctors, should it come to that. Tonight, my board has a time 8:30pm when we chose to give Aiden Benedryl because he had not eaten anything new nor just before his eruption. What is not on the board is that at 8:30, we also began our three day watch period. I've been watching him sleep for a while now and he is sleeping soundly. Regular breathing. No wheezing. No swelling. No hives. I may have a few tears as I watch him sleep the next few nights but nothing like the tears of relief and joy I will have when he is out of that 72 hour window again. I may just have a little cocktail after my new Food Allergy Mom all nighters. Because why not? Stress relief. That's how I roll these days. 


#foodallergies #anaphylaxis #biphasic #foodallergyfamily #foodallergymom

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

join Allergic Living's response to Chatelaine article - It's Just Nuts

Blue Bear Aware received the following letter from Pam, Associate Editor, Allergic Living and BC Anaphylaxis Advocate 'I am writing to you for your support. In the December issue of Chatelaine, writer Patricia Pearson's article, 'It's Just Nuts' offers up a distorted view of the kids with food allergies in our schools. You can read the article at the following link: http://en.chatelaine.com/english/weekend/article.jsp?content=20091001_150000_0023 Please e-mail me back if you want to have your signature added to the following letter, which we are sending to Chatelaine magazine and asking their editors to publish. I need your name, city/town/prov, and e-mail - the latter for verification only from Chatelaine's fact-checker. e.g. NOT for publication. pamela2543@shaw.ca I need these soonest. It will then be sent to Chatelaine on behalf of all of us. Please pass this letter on to your network of friends and family so they can add their voices. T

Bluebearaware.com Store is closing

Store Closing We've heard that before... On December 31, 2018, the storefront for  bluebearaware.com  will be shut down. As the owner of this amazing online retailer, I can assure you that this is a genuine closing. Further, I do not have any intention of selling the business. On the contrary, I plan to keep Blue Bear alive. YES! We'll still be here. Just not selling products for the foreseeable future. What can you expect to see in the future? I love bringing smiles to people's faces. I love knowing that I have made someone feel important. To let them know that I see them and they matter. I have a big a-s, bleeding heart. I know it. I own it. I want to save the world, one person at a time. I've been a crisis counselor. I've worked with the women's shelter. In our food allergic community, I started as a support group leader. To say that those experiences were rewarding is absolutely an understatement, but my life has changed since then. I have so

Blogging about The Blue Bear Aware bloggy Blog

Shortly after acquiring Blue Bear Aware, it quickly hit me how much I had taken on myself. I realized that I didn't necessarily want to give any of it up as a whole, but the easiest way for me to continue writing, food allergy support, advocacy, running BlueBearAware.com , working Full Time outside the home, raising two children, keeping house and try (I do try) to be a good wife, yada yada yada... was to simplify areas of my life. If you know me, then you know how incredibly difficult that is for me to do but I knew I needed to do that and it would require some hard decisions. One of the first decisions that I made to start simplifying was to significantly reduce the number of support groups I lead or played admin for. I began by turning over the Ann Arbor No Nuts Moms Support Group Leadership to three awesome ladies. I'm so glad they stepped up to take the group on because these three have proven to be an incredible team dedicated to connecting with and helping the food a