Unbelievable Turn of Events

In January 2009, Joel Stein wrote a piece in the L.A. Times which included such offensive, insulting gems as the following:

"Your kid doesn’t have an allergy to nuts. Your kid has a parent who needs to feel special.”

"And genes certainly don't cause 25% of parents to believe that their kids have food allergies, when 4% do. Yuppiedom does."

I'd rather not link to that article, but I suppose you can find it on Google.

In August 2010, Joel Stein wrote a piece for TIME magazine in which he revealed that his 15 month old son was.......wait for it........recently diagnosed with nut allergies. !!!! Here's a quote:

"The column was not the first thing that came to mind after my 1-year-old son Laszlo started sneezing, then breaking out in hives, then rubbing his eyes, then crying through welded-shut eyes, then screaming and, finally, vomiting copiously at the entrance of the Childrens Hospital emergency room."

I really wish Joel Stein hadn't written that first article.
But I also really wish his son didn't have a food allergy. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Georgia has thankfully never had a reaction landing us in the ER, and I can't imagine how terrifying that would be for any parent.

Why must hurtful words, misinformation, and food allergies go hand in hand?
I'm sure only a small fraction of the people who read the first article will pick up the second. Even the second is a bit too cheeky and not enough mea culpa for my taste.

For more on this topic, go here: The Food Allergy Mama
or here: The Nut-Free Mom Blog
or here: Allergy Moms (newsletter) [scroll down to "Peanut-Free Tables are Turned!"]

That Went Well!

Things have been busy around here, but I guess I should follow up on how the allergy summit (as we affectionately refer to it) went. In short, it went great!

We met with Georgia's two teachers, the head of the school, and the head of the early-childhood portion of the school on the day before preschool started. We all gathered around a preschooler height table, sitting in tiny preschooler sized chairs. Ha!

I don't want to bore anyone with all of the details, but we discussed such things as:
-The basics: We went over Georgia's allergens (tree nuts, peanuts, sesame, fish and shellfish).
-Snack time: We'll send Georgia with her own safe snack everyday. Plus, the teachers agreed to send a note home to all of the other parents asking them not to send in snacks with Georgia's allergens. Essentially, a belt and suspenders approach. Hopefully the other parents will cooperate, but Georgia will be eating our food anyway. Georgia is a half-day student, so we don't have to worry about lunchroom issues this year.
-Substitute teachers: they'll need to know this stuff, too, so we discussed communication. I'm actually not horribly worried about this since Georgia's pre-K class has two teachers. It's unlikely they'll both be out on the same day.
-Treats: We'll bring in a stash of safe treats to be stored at school for Georgia to consume on days when special occasions like birthdays or holidays are celebrated with food in the classroom.
-Medication: One of Georgia's EpiPens will be in the office across the hall from her classroom, the other will be in the school's main office. We also supplied Benadryl. We used the trainer EpiPen to teach everyone at this meeting how to use one in case of emergency. We handed out an Emergency Medical Plan to be stored with the medications. It describes different levels of possible reactions and that kind of thing.
-I feel like there was more to it, but that's all I'm remembering right now.

The Cons:
-One of the women present twice accidentally referred to Georgia as a boy. I hate to say it, but this woman is a bit older, and I think the slip ups might be related to that - like a little short term memory issue. Which is totally no big deal, except that in the context of conveying information that is critically important to our daughter's health and safety, it didn't make me feel great that everything would be remembered and carried out according to the discussed plan.
-I made reference to storing the Epi's in an unlocked place, but someone misunderstood and later in the conversation referred to locking up the Epi's. A simple miscommunication that we cleared up, but I just hope that everyone got the gist that these things need to be very accessible. Fortunately, we have never even had to use them. But should the need arise, from what I've been told, seconds really count. If I had my druthers, the medication would be stored in the classroom, but apparently it's against school policy.

The Pros:
-This was not all new to them. The school has had allergic children before. They do not have formal policies or procedures in place, but at least we weren't having to fully educate them from square one, which was fantastic.
-Both of Georgia's teachers have some experience dealing with children with food allergies.
-One of Georgia's teachers was taking notes, which made me feel wonderful. She is also the one who suggested (before I even could) that she write a note to all of the other parents letting them know that there is a student in the class with allergies.

I will admit - I was totally nervous about this meeting. But I survived. It was fine. It was quite pleasant, actually. Silver lining of having an allergy kid: we got a chance to meet the teachers a day early. And though we may now squarely be labeled as the High Maintenance Parents, at least they know who we are. (I hope they like us!! What? I can't help it.)

Georgia's made it through one week of preschool, and already I feel so much more relaxed. She's doing a great job eating only our snacks and wearing her bracelet. As for my mental health, I'm not worrying about allergies on a daily basis. So all is well.

Maybe the fact that she has cried about going to preschool every single day and has been suffering from some serious separation anxiety has a silver lining to it, too: all of this allergy business has been put on the back burner. This week I've had bigger fish to fry in the motherhood department, if you know what I mean.

Not that we can fry fish in our house. (Hardy har har.)

To School!

This is a week of many firsts for us.
June's 1st birthday.
Georgia's heading to school (not "back to school" since she's never been before).
And the big kicker....
We're meeting with the head of the school and Georgia's teacher tomorrow morning to discuss allergies. Our first ever allergy advocacy meeting, if you will.

I am really not looking forward to it. I'm sure these women will be quite nice, and I know I have nothing to fear. It's just that this "allergy-parent" role is one of those things that I feel like I have to grin and bear even though I'd gladly have avoided the role. Oh well, such is parenting, right? I'm sure this will be the first of many such meetings with schools, camps, etc., so I had better get used to it.

At first I was feeling rather delinquent, because our meeting is happening, oh, the day before school starts. I would like to have scheduled this sooner and have this behind us already, but at least this way the information will be fresh in their minds at the beginning of the school year and not forgotten from an earlier meeting, right? Also, I'm feeling more prepared now. I used this food allergy checklist for back to school from The Nut-Free Mom blog. It's quite handy if you find yourself in this situation.

I'll report back on how the meeting goes!

Allerbling!

Georgia has Allerbling now. Sweet!

No, I'm not joking. Could I make up a product name like that?

Allerbling is a type of medical alert bracelet made specifically for kids, both in size and appearance. My hope is that its bright color will mean that people actually see it and pay attention (as opposed to a regular, metal bracelt, which would be easier to miss). I also hope that its kid-friendly design will mean that Georgia will keep it on at preschool. We'll see about that.

Here's a picture. Sure beats pinning a big "DO NOT FEED ME" sign to her shirt everyday. (I have actually heard of allergy moms of yesteryear doing that, when food allergies in schools were not so commonplace. Sounds ridiculous, and yet highly effective at the same time...hmmm....something to consider if this Allerbling thing doesn't work out!)

I'm anxiously awaiting Allerbling's addition of a sesame charm to the mix. Too bad Georgia will then have too many allergy charms for them all to fit on 1 bracelet. *sigh*

See, I'm here to make all of you peanuts-only mamas feel lucky!

Glad to be home

Just got back from a wonderful week's vacation! But...

Vacation brings food allergies to the forefront of our minds in a way that they normally aren't present in our day to day lives. More restaurants, takeout, desserts, and caretakers are involved.

All went really well. I have no complaints about vacation. I'm just saying that there is a sense of relief to coming home to your own pantry and fridge after a week on the go.

While traveling with a child with food allergies, vacation for me now has this "character building" aspect to it that I'd rather it didn't. As in, it forces me to practice being brave enough to ask questions of servers, restaurants, and hotels that (for God knows what reason) I often feel embarrassed to ask. (Confession: I like to make my husband do it instead whenever possible.)

Anyway...vacation was great. But it's also really nice to be home and to not be thinking about food allergies so often! Maybe you can relate?

EDITED TO ADD: Okay, so I was going to be nice and wasn't going to mention it to protect the innocent, but since my sister brought it up in the comments... There was that 1 incident where a pizza slice with pesto (i.e., tree nuts) was offered to Georgia, and she was moments away from eating it. Thankfully, that was avoided, though we'll never know how she would've reacted if at all. While this incident highlights how easy it is to have a slip up even when everyone is trying their best to protect an allergic child, and how hard it is for those not in the everyday practice of thinking about allergies to pay attention to every single ingredient, it's also a good opportunity for me to thank my family for trying so hard. Learning about allergies has been an evolving process for all of us, myself included, and I really appreciate my family's efforts to go along with all of our requests. I am thankful that vacation gave everyone in my family a glimpse into what it's like to think about allergies at every meal.

And you wonder why we allergy moms get a little nervous about preschool...

A recent conversation with Georgia (age 2, almost 3), which was brought on by the topic of eating at preschool, and her new allergy alert bracelet:

Me: "So you can wear this bracelet to remind people of your allergies."

Georgia: "Yeah! It will be so great! And then the food will be safe."

Me: "Well....no, not necessarily. The food might still not be safe. You can just eat our food. We'll give you safe food. Because, well, you know...some other grown ups are not quite as good as mommy and daddy at reading the ingredients. So let's just eat our food, okay?"

Georgia: "Right."

Me (seeing a chance to practice): "Does Georgia eat peanuts?"
Georgia: "Nooooooo."

Me: "Or tree nuts?"
Georgia: "Noooooooo."

Me: "Or cucumbers?" (Just checking here, to see if she has any clue what she's saying.)
Georgia: "Nooooooo."

Me: "Actually, cucumbers are safe, sweetie. You can eat cucumbers."

Georgia: "Some people can't eat cucumbers. But we can eat them."
Me: "Um. Yeah. I guess so. But you can definitely eat cucumbers."
Me again: "So, anyway....no peanuts."
Georgia: "Right."

Me: "And no tree nuts."
Georgia: "Right."

Me: "And no fish."
Georgia: "Right. I can't eat fish. Well, I can't eat orange fish. I mean gold fish. I can't eat gold fish."

(Oh crap...this is really devolving. Is she talking about goldfish crackers now?)

Me: "Well, you can eat goldfish crackers, right? Yes. You can eat goldfish crackers, honey. But you just can't eat real fish."
Georgia: "Right."

I think what we can conclude here is that my oh-so-smart two year old may tell you at any given moment that she is allergic to cucumbers and goldfish.

Raising Your Child's Awareness vs. Freaking Them Out

I recently read an interview of a psychologist studying the social and emotional toll of coping with food allergies. Specifically, the "shocking" levels of stress in mothers of children with food allergies.

I guess there was nothing shocking to me in the interview, but I took note of the following quote from Dr. Rebecca Knibb:

If the parents cope well, this behavior is learned by the child. Children are very perceptive and learn vicariously, i.e. they learn by watching how parents react to situations. If a parent is very anxious, the child tends to be anxious also.

That sounds about right to me. So, how do you teach your child to better understand his or her food allergy in order to keep them safe, without scaring them in the process? How do you go about hiding your "shocking" levels of anxiety from your sponge-like children? : )

My daughter is not yet 3 years old, and we are trying to gradually increase her awareness of her own food allergies and what that means as far as what she can and can't eat. This is especially important since she'll be starting preschool in the fall, surrounded by well-meaning adults and children who may occasionally offer her food that she should not eat.

However, we have never once told her something like, "You could die." I don't think she even gets it that plants die, or that bugs die when you squish them, so the last thing we need is for her to live in fear for her own life. I don't think any toddler should be burdened with such a heavy thought, but dare I say, our Georgia is an especially sensitive one. (Understatement of the century.) We have an age appropriate allergy book that mentions hives, coughing, itching, and that sort of thing, but if you asked Georgia, I think she'd tell you that her allergies might give her hives. If you asked her the follow up question of, "What is a hive?" I think that she might or might not be able to answer that. But again, please keep in mind that she's only 2.

So, it's all very weird. Some days she'll say things that make me feel proud of our efforts, like maybe she's really "getting" it. She's pretty good at asking us, "Do you have the EpiPens?" when we leave the house. (Not because we normally need a reminder, but more so that if she is ever with a new babysitter or relative that she will hopefully ask them the same thing.) And then on other days, someone will ask her if she wants a peanut butter sandwich, and she'll answer yes without hesitation, which is disappointing. But it's not surprising that when you're two, and have relied on trusted adults to meet your every need, that you don't exactly stop to question, "Wait - is this safe for me?" at every turn. It takes practice to instill this behavior.

Once again, there is no particular conclusion to this post. Obviously, I do have a certain level of anxiety related to Georgia's food allergies, though I try to keep it in check. Maybe this blog is a good outlet for me to write things down and get them off my chest, rather than passing my worries on to my daughter? It all goes back to that whole Goldilocks Principle thing -- I hope we are teaching her enough to be careful, but not so much as to be scared.

Up in the Air

Remember how I was talking about flying with Georgia on a recent post about our trip to Florida? Well, as of then I was feeling pretty chill about the whole thing.

Now, the Department of Transportation is soliciting comments about what, if anything, to do about peanuts on commercial airlines. You can go here to read more or leave a comment if you have an opinion on the matter.

To put it bluntly, reading the comments of other people with opinions on this matter has left me feeling like I'm going to hyperventilate. Crap, can Georgia really DIE from airborne peanut dust in a plane? Should I not even be letting her fly? Someone please talk me down from the ledge now.

I didn't even leave a comment for the DOT yet because I don't know where I come out on the issue. Reading this formal response to the DOT from FAAN made me feel a lot better. I guess sometimes listening to experts and research results is better than letting yourself be inundated with personal anecdotes. I'd recommend reading FAAN's letter if you are looking for an educated, well written response from the "allergy community", especially if you would put yourself in the "I just don't get it" category or the "it should be your problem, not mine" category.

In other news, I had lunch with my friend Kim this Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed picking her brain about her practices living with a nut allergy for the past 30 years. Contrary to the whole DOT comments thing, talking with Kim had me feeling like if anything I could relax my standards a bit more. She always makes me feel better. I'll write more about all of that later.

As an aside...Kim flew into town for the weekend.
As a further aside...I'm guessing that Georgia is not so sensitive as to die from peanut dust on a plane, or she would've been screwed on our last flight. But with no tests for severity, and no real exposure history/ingestion reactions to rely on, I have no way of being 100% sure.

One more thing...I find it interesting that the DOT is soliciting comments on other issues like waiting on tarmacs and baggage policies, but this peanut issue is garnering about 6 times as many comments as any other issue. Obviously a hot button topic. You would think people would care more about waiting 8 hours on the tarmac than not being served their precious peanuts, but apparently not.

EDITED TO ADD: I think the DOT dropped the whole peanut ban proposal. Well, it wasn't even a proposal, really. They were just soliciting comments, and the peanut farmer lobbyists went nuts. (ha ha. pun intended.) It's a shame.

Rhubarb Crisp

This isn't going to become a recipe blog. There are tons of existing resources for allergy friendly recipes out there already. However, as I was throwing together this rhubarb crisp tonight, it occurred to me that it's free of most allergens, and well, delicious, so I thought I'd share. It's very seasonal and easy to make.

1) Wash rhubarb and cut into small chunks -- about 4 cups worth, more or less.
2) Mix chopped rhubarb with 1 c sugar and 1/4 c flour and toss it all in a baking dish.
3) Combine the following in a bowl: 2/3 c brown sugar, 1/3 c butter (cold and cut into pats or smaller), 1/2 c flour, 1/2 c oats, and 1 tsp cinnamon. I mixed this all together using a pastry cutter cuz I own one and I'm cool like that. You could also use your fingers or two forks. Get it to a kinda crumbly consistency.
4) Shake crumbly topping on top of the rhubarb mixture in the baking dish.
5) Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes. It should be bubbly around the edges, with the topping having come to a brownish crisp. (Mine took the full 40. Damn!)

Yum.

Question is: will we share with our allergic daughter? Hmmm....

Florida Vacation Report

I went into this vacation fully expecting that we'd have at least 1 allergy "incident", not because I was trying to be pessimistic, but because I was trying to be realistic and prepared. We were on a seafood-laden island with a child with a fish/shellfish allergy after all, plus Georgia did have a reaction while we were there last year. I figured the risk of cross-contamination in restaurants was pretty high.

Fortunately, we had no incidents! (Unless you count the mysterious hive that Georgia got on her wrist on the flight down, but more on that later.) Our lack of allergic reactions was admittedly due in large part to the fact that we only made it out to eat with the kids once the whole week. We were lucky to be staying in a condo with a full kitchen. Our reluctance to eat out was only partly driven by allergy concerns; it was much more related to juggling beach time with naps and bedtime, and the difficulty of getting everyone showered, dressed and out the door. At any rate, I'll take it!

As for the flights:

This is an area where I as a parent am probably more relaxed until I go about reading certain other allergy blogs and realize that other people are WAY more freaked out than I am about flying with a food allergic child. Who is to say whose approach is better? Some people won't fly with food allergic children because it plain scares them too much. Others bring wet wipes and make sure to wipe down all armrests, tray tables, etc. Then there's us. We're careful (as we always are) not to let Georgia eat anything containing her allergens, and we bring aboard plenty of Benadryl plus four Epipens just to be safe. But we don't otherwise take extra precautions when flying.

And now, a couple quick stories:

On the way down, Georgia got one tiny hive on her wrist. Didn't bother her. No idea what it was from. Could potentially have even been a bug bite. But it did make Joe and I exchange glances and think to ourselves, "What if?" I guess it made me wonder if I should actually be wiping things down more often? Seriously, though, you can't wipe down the whole world around you, right? So I am not sure that there's a rational point to doing so in limited instances. I would be happy to hear a counterargument from someone out there reading this.

On the flight back, we were cruising along and then heard the man in the row directly behind us say to his wife, "Honey, hand me my peanuts please." [CUE SOUND OF NEEDLE SCRATCHING ACROSS RECORD.] Okay, so this one resulted in even bigger exchanged glances and raised my anxiety level quite a bit. I can't fully explain why, I mean, it's not like he said, "Honey, hand me my peanuts please so that I can then touch the kid in front of me and make her eat them." Right? Besides, on our American Airlines flight they were selling mixed nuts for snacks, so it was just as likely that any other passenger could buy/eat/drop nuts, right? But still. There was just something unnerving about it, and it had me thinking that maybe those parents who board the plane and start wiping things down are not so crazy after all. I can almost guarantee you that had we been sitting in this man's seat after him (like on the next flight), Georgia would have gotten hives from contact with the nut residue. (Nut residue? Is that an actual thing? You know what I mean.)

Now, here's the part that I actually find hilarious. So amazing to me that you have no choice but to laugh. He was not just having a little snack pack of nuts, or a trail mix, or something like that. He was actually shelling his own peanuts on the plane. You know, like people normally do at a ballpark. In fact, ballparks are pretty much the only place that I have ever seen this (unless you count the reception desk at my father's office, but that's another story all together, and not a common business place snack offering, in my opinion).

I know he was just oblivious and not some kind of anti-allergy zealot, but I couldn't help thinking, are you kidding me? Have you been living under a rock to not know that some people are in favor of banning nuts all together on planes, and you think it's cool to SHELL whole peanuts about 12 inches away from my peanut-allergic child?

Now, don't misunderstand me. Although I found this all amazing, and it did cause me a certain degree of anxiety, I don't bear any ill will toward the man. In fact, later in the flight he entertained our 8 month-old by making funny faces, so I give him major nice guy points for that. I just kind of couldn't believe the nut thing.

So, there you have it. No real point or conclusion to all of this other than to say these things always get me thinking. Should I wipe surfaces more? Should I take more precautions when flying? Should I just try to relax?

And now, just for giggles (or shock value depending on how you view these things), here's a photo of me eating nuts on my very first flight with Georgia, when she was a baby and we did not yet know of her allergies.


{That's me with the fancy pinky, looking terrible but happy. Georgia would be the hidden baby under the blanket, just below the bowl of nuts.}