Relatively new the world of blogging, it has been a wonderful experience thus far. To be able to read, write and relate & disagree with the thoughts and ideas of people from all walks of life has been amazing, refreshing, entertaining, cathartic and last but not the least extremely educative. The people I have met and reached out to are awesome and the things I have learned and absorbed are one too many to count.
How else would I know about Food Allergy Awareness Month. The various blogs I have read thus far have given me enough and more information than I hope to ever need. I, for one, like the MM, never thought much of allergies except sympathize with those that had it in some shape or form. We have always been sensitive to allergies, given that we have close friends that we hang out with on a regular basis that suffer from some of these food allergies. A good friend has lived with it for so long that she can tell traces of egg in something she has consumed even if the packaging of the item makes no mention of it. Given her allergies, it is not very surprising that her daughter has inherited the allergy trait from her, not of the egg kind but that of the nuts kind. All parties that we host are planned with these constraints in mind.
Fortunately, our household hasn’t had to deal with food allergies of any kind. All of us have taken well to any food that has been placed in front of us (at least of the kind we have ingested thus far). Ever since I have been married to the OH, I have known that he is allergic to penicillin. Given that there have been minimal trips to the doctor’s office in all these years (touch wood), we haven’t had to worry much about it. When we had Meg, she stayed home in the care of wonderful grandparents for the first year and a half of her life. At 18 months, when we started her at day care, we literally flung open Pandora’s Box. The OH & I can literally count the number of days she went to day care in the first six months with the fingers on just one hand. It was week after week of the dreaded ear infections, cold, coughs and fever. We cruised through antibiotics on a daily basis much akin to multivitamins and it was on our grocery list every single week.
We thankfully got past that stage and all was well and healthy till Raul showed up in our lives. He brought with him a completely different set of issues unrelated to ear infections but closer to the asthmatic kind. He suffered from cold induced asthma and therefore had to be watched real carefully during the winter months. It was during one of these months that he started school and decided to bring home so unwelcome guests of the viral kind. Being the good brother that he is, he had to share it with his big sister. Meg was attacked yet again by the famed ear infection that had plagued her for months when she was a toddler. A trip to the pediatrician was made and she was given the routine antibiotics that she probably still had floating around in her system given the gallons she had ingested in those early years. This time around, we were in for a surprise. The poor kid, within hours of consuming the medication was breaking out into hives so bad she could hardly get herself up to stand. Little did we think that she was reacting to the medication given her history with said medicine? The following days were spent smearing her with lotions and calamines to soothe her skin and help with the itching. Grandma, the OH and I would take turns settle down the little girl who patiently struggled through her discomfort. We spent days wondering what was up with the rashes and hives with the pediatrician till the connection was made one final day that it was the very same penicillin that she was allergic to. Of course she picked that one thing to inherit from the OH.
The strange thing about this entire incident is that she somehow picked this allergy up along the way. The very same medicine that she had consumed in large quantities was now suddenly something that was not acceptable to her little body. We have since been extremely careful in communicating to the school and any place that requests allergy information that she is allergic to penicillin. This for sure makes it inconvenient but is definitely better than the food allergies suffered by one too many. I have nothing but respect for all the children and parents who deal with these food allergies every single day.
