The Diagnosis

This week a terrible thing happened.  A thirteen year old girl died of anaphylaxis after accidentally eating peanut butter that frosted a rice krispie treat.  The scariest part is that once she ingested it, her parents did everything right.  They gave her Benedryl.  They monitored her.  When she began to vomit 20 minutes later, and have trouble breathing, they gave her the epi-pen. Three epi-pens.  Her father, a doctor, administered them. 

This story, for obvious reasons, has just rocked me.  I almost started crying at the grocery store yesterday as I perused items, as usual making sure my purchases were foods that had zero chance of ever having come into contact with peanuts or treenuts- not even at the factory.  I just felt, at that moment, like all of the wonderful precautions that I learned from other moms can't necessarily protect my daughter.  

Izzy was diagnosed just last summer with a life-threatening allergy to peanuts and tree nuts.  I'm what most would think of as an overprotective mom, I imagine.  I read (too many) parenting books.  I obsess about possibly not-that-important details of raising my kids.  I thought that this hyper-vigilant behavior would protect us from things like food allergies or other illness.  When I was pregnant I heard someone mention peanut allergies. It spurred me minutes later to look up online whether I should be avoiding peanuts.  I can tell you exactly where I was sitting when I googled this.  It was only feet away from the kitchen area of my office, where I had been happily eating a peanut butter sandwich at least once a day for three months -- it was one of the only things to get me through my morning sickness.  Online I read that people with environmental allergies (trees, grass, etc) should probably avoid eating peanuts while pregnant.  No one had ever told me this! I thought, well, I can start now.  People will think I'm being my usual hypervigilant self, I said to myself, but missing peanuts for six months won't kill me.  So I never ate another peanut until after she was born, and assumed this bought us immunity to such a diagnosis.

Then one day, three years later, I really wanted my kiddo to have a little more protein in her treats.  However, I couldn't get her to eat a simple pj & j.  So I concocted a plan one Saturday morning.  I baked up a batch of peanut butter banana muffins.  She loved muffins so I figured this would be a slam dunk in getting her to change her mind on the ol' peanut butter.  She didn't trust that the muffin was something she would like.  I can still see her nose scrunching up as she brought it to her lips, stuck out her teeth like she was smiling, and took the smallest bite humanly possible.  A few flakes of muffin touched her tongue, she tasted the peanut butter and immediately spit it out all over the table.  Fail.  I cleaned it up and started to put away the dishes.  About 20 minutes later she threw up. Everywhere.  It was more vomit than what should come out of a three year old!  Minutes after that, she was bouncing on an air mattress that we had in the living room.  I remember thinking, how can she possibly have a stomach virus if she's doing gymnastics in the living room minutes after vomiting like that?

In my classic Stephanie way, I obsessed about it all morning.  By the grace of God, I recalled a few other times she had vomited like this and felt fine afterward.  She never came down with a virus either of those times.  And in those instances she had vomited so much that it looked more like a horror movie than a three year old getting sick.  Both times were at parties at our house where I had assumed that she had just eaten too much junk food.  Both times it sent our guests running for the door, afraid to catch whatever bug would make a three year old explode at the dinner table.  As I thought about these, I recalled that on at least one these occasions, my dad had given her peanuts from the shell.  I now wondered if it may have been an allergic reaction.  She had never had hives after eating them, or at least not that I had noticed.  I had never heard of vomiting as an allergic reaction.  I googled it, of course, and learned that stomach upset can be a sign.  

My solution was to call the doctor the following Monday and ask them what Benedryl dose to give the next time she accidentally had peanuts.  Today I still laugh at my casual solution!  I was so uncharacteristically laid back about the whole thing.  I am sooo thankful that my doctor set me right!  I can still hear the nurse responding, "Ummmm....we need to see your daughter TODAY.  The next time she ingests peanuts she could go into anaphylactic shock and die. Every reaction is different.  You never know what's going tohappen"  What??  Die?? From peanuts??  Even though she just vomited the last time?? Why would her body trick us like that??

So, in a little bit of shock myself, we traveled to the doc.  They gave us an epi-pen and referred us to an allergist at the research-rich University of Michigan Food Allergy Clinic. They could see us in in four months.  I couldn't wait that long for obvious reasons and found someone at St. Joe's.  The tests, both skin and blood, confirmed the suspicion and also indicated an allergy to some tree nuts.  And our journey began.  

I'll write next time about that appointment, for the mommas who have one scheduled.  And I'll share the priceless information we've learned about this deadly allergy since then.

On an important side note, discussion in my No Nuts Moms Group about Natalie Giorgi's death has yielded some important changes to how we will respond if Izzy ever eats a peanut or tree nut.  We won't wait for a reaction.  We will just stick her immediately with the epi-pen and take her to the hospital.  Time is of the essence.  Once a reaction has progressed too far, even epinephrine can't stop it.  We are going to try to head it off at the pass.  And there will be uneducated nurses and doctors, and perhaps others, who roll their eyes and think we overreacted.  But, thank God, there are wise allergists out there who have advised moms to give the epi pre-symptom.  And when the others roll their eyes, I'll look over at my daughter sitting next to me, healthy and well, and I won't care one bit what they think.