The story of a child with a food allergy is all to familiar to many of us. Having an older food allergic child, I have noticed over the last 18 years, the rise in the number of children suffering from dangerous food allergies. Although, our family has a milk allergy, I have noticed a major increase in Peanut allergies. Interesting, Heather Fraser has lived it and research it, in her new book, The History of the Peanut Allergy Epidemic.
Please check out her book website and buy a copy. Her story and research is amazing - http://www.peanutallergyepidemic.com
Here is a little bit from her site:
A peanut allergy story
In 1995, my 13 month old son had an anaphylactic reaction to peanut butter.
He wasn’t crying, in fact he was quite cheerful as he slowly fused with colour. Intense red and white blotches quickly formed on his face and arms. His eye lids thickened. I'd never seen anything like it.
I snatched him from his high chair and we ran.
Perhaps we were both too stunned, too gobsmacked with disbelief to cry or worry. It was just so unexpected. Even when we arrived at the ER and I announced that my son had eaten peanut butter I could not fathom the response of the nurses. They leapt across desks, caps flying, yelling, wheeling, snatching up the boy, jabbing his little arm with needles, stabbing an IV into the back of his hand. Screaming now with fear and confusion, he was strapped down so he couldn’t move, pumped with drugs, hooked to monitors and drips.
I stood behind the team of four or six or there might have been 10 doctors and nurses, whatever the exact number it seemed totally out of proportion to my announcement that we had just eaten peanut butter. How could a food I had eaten for years cause such a reaction?
They fussed for what seemed like hours until they finally unstrapped him....
After a round of blood and scratch tests, the doctor diagnosed our toddler with allergies to peanuts and nuts. He confirmed that our son was highly reactive perhaps even to just the odour of peanuts. With drugs we had managed to contain and recover from the reaction -- the next time we may not be so lucky. And there seemed not way to correct the condition. We were given a life long script for an Epipen and began adjusting to the idea that these foods could kill him.
On constant alert
Like other families with food allergic children we lived in a state of constant tension. I stopped buying processed foods and made all our meals from scratch. We stopped going to restaurants. Wherever we went, I was vigilant for smears of peanut butter left on tables, playground equipment or on grocery cart handles. Trace amounts on the skin or lip, we were warned, could trigger a deadly reaction. The allergy also posed social concerns -- he was often left out of play because friends had peanut butter in the house. He took his own food to parties and was taught not to share. It was just too dangerous.
When he started kindergarten in 1999, there were no allergy policies or any true understanding of the condition. The kindergarten teacher kept giving him candy rewards until one day, my fearful rebuke for this kindly habit finally sunk in. She turned white. Given this general lack of understanding at the schools at this time, I refused to let him attend many field trips envisioning him trapped on a bus with a peanut butter sandwich. I laminated home-made posters with his allergy profile and a photo -- two for the classroom, and more for the staffroom and the main office. I insisted that his class be peanut free. Every morning we strapped an Epi-belt containing two pens around his waist.
I couldn’t help but wonder if I was shadow-boxing my own paranoia, and not surprisingly I was accused of going overboard. But, as it turned out, I wasn't the only mother dealing with this problem in exactly the same way. A steady increase of peanut allergic children and concerned parents joined school communities across the province, the country. Lunch bag inspections became common. Any peanut related food, granola bar or sandwich was confiscated and sent home with a cautionary note. Initially, parents insisted that the peanut butter ban had violated their rights. Soon, however, everyone was forced to accommodate this new generation of allergic children. There were just too many of them.
At this point, at last, I started to think. What was going on? This allergy had developed in hundreds of thousands of children, not just mine – it had grown from an infrequent occurrence in 1990 to 1.5% of the US population, 4.5 million people by 2009. Neither coincidence nor genetic fluke could explain these numbers.
I started to dig. I wondered if the epidemic had grown from some unfortunate but perfect constellation of conditions and events. And in these circumstances, perhaps I too played a part.
My inquiries became the first book on the History of the Peanut Allergy Epidemic.
Biography
Heather Fraser, MA, BA, B.Ed is a Toronto-based writer. In addition to studies in alternative medicine, she has two university degrees in history and a third in education.