Wanted: Someone With Allergy Experience

That’s me!

When people find out that Katie has so many allergies, they often say “I don’t know how you do it”. My answer is that I do it because I want to make sure my daughter is safe and that it really isn’t that hard, it just takes a little extra work.  People are always amazed by my answer. “Not hard?!” they say. I guess for me it is more of a routine because I have been around food allergies all my life.

The Early Years

Katie is not the first person to have anaphylactic allergies in my family. My Mother and older sister are both severally allergic to Peanuts and various other nut combinations. When I was growing up I knew not to eat peanuts, peanut butter or any kind of nuts around my Mother and sister. I was one of the only kids at the lunch table who had jelly sandwiches instead of the usual peanut butter and jelly variety. This may be why I can’t stand to be around peanut butter! I did, however, eat Snicker bars and Peanut M and M’s all the time. I just had to remember to brush my teeth or chew gum if I was going to be near them.

I personally did not have food allergies until I was older. Although I did suffer from severe eczema and I was allergic to most shampoos and soaps. I probably had food allergies even then but they really did not test for allergies back then like they do now.

  

One day, while I was in high school, my sister had a severe allergic reaction to bananas. It was pretty bad and she spent several days in the hospital and a couple more at home. Oh well, no more bananas at home! The rest of my teen and college years were pretty uneventful allergy wise and I enjoyed this respite even though it was short lived.

The Baby Years

It wasn’t until our son was born that allergies decided to rear their ugly head again. Our son had a terrible time with ear infections, asthma and eczema when he was a baby so we thought there might be some kind of link to allergies but we did not pursue it. It wasn’t until we started him on solid food that we started to see a change in his behavior. After he would eat, he would bang his head on the floor repeatedly. The pediatrician thought it was a behavior problem but I noticed that it happened after he had eaten carrots. So it was off to the Allergist to get him tested. The results came back with allergies to carrots, wheat, corn and soy. We removed them from his diet and thankfully he grew out of them by the time he was 9 years old. Poor guy, recently we found out he has an intolerance to avocados.

At the same time, I had also developed intolerance to wheat, dairy and bananas. Go figure! I guess you could say that we are an allergic family. My husband says it’s from my side of the family which is probably right since he is the only one without food allergies.

Well as you know this blog is about my daughter and her severe allergies so we had to get to her allergies at some point. About four years after my son was born I was pregnant with my daughter.  I was determined that she would not have the same food problems that we had so I decided to breast feed her for an entire year before introducing any kind of food to her diet. Once I started slowly introducing solid food I noticed that she was throwing up at least one time a day. This went on for a month so I decided to have her tested for allergies. She was diagnosed with anaphylactic reactions to dairy, eggs, peanuts and all other nuts. There was not a single nut that she did not have a high reaction on. We added sesame to the list a couple years ago.

Will she ever grow out of these allergies? Maybe someday, but it is unlikely that she will outgrow all of them.  So our family will continue to do what we do best and that is to carry on as usual and to do what we can to help Katie make healthy and safe decisions for many years to come.