The Start of our Food Allergy Journey
When my daughter was a baby she started getting red blotches and rashes on her face, arms, neck, and legs. After eliminating lotions, soaps, etc., with no change, we had her Doctor check it out. The Doctor diagnosed it as a severe case of eczema and wanted to put her on strong steroid creams. I did not want to do that. I wanted to stop what was causing it, not just treat the symptoms and side effects. I was suspicious of dairy. Her Doctor and other Doctors did not think it could be that. By this time she was on Baby Formula. After a lot of searching I was able to find a quality formula with no dairy in it, and sure enough she cleared up completely and that convinced her Doctor to check for a dairy allergy.
When the blood test results came back I was told that she did in fact have a dairy allergy and that, “Oh by the way.. you should also keep her away from eggs”. At this phase, I was not aware of the severity of the allergies. I thought it would be another skin reaction, if anything. We were not given an EpiPen or any further instructions other than to keep her away from dairy and eggs.
We did our best to keep her away from those things and her skin was staying clear. Then one day while I was eating peanut butter (by the spoonful of course) she came running around the corner and ran into me knocking the spoon out my hand and some of the peanut butter smeared on her leg. She had an instant reaction to it so I just figured peanut butter was something else that we would keep her away from, but still not thinking it was severe or life-threatening.
About a year later at her big sister’s birthday party she begged me for a piece of birthday cake. I gave in because she wanted to be included so badly and I wanted that for her also and thought, if anything, she’d have a skin rash we would tend to later. Bring on the hydrocortisone! She didn’t eat much of the cake but soon after she started crying and telling me she didn’t feel good. Her eyes were really red and itchy and she kept clawing at her throat. She then started throwing up so I rushed her to the bathroom. We had been finishing up the party and getting ready to leave when this happened and she seemed to be feeling better after she threw up so I got her home and gave her a bath and she seemed fine.
About 30 minutes after her bath and probably 1.5 hours or so since she ate the cake she started acting really weird, very hyper but was out of breath. I realized her breathing was not right and she couldn’t talk well, like speaking was making her out of breath. I asked her to sing, “ Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and she couldn’t. She was breathing so deep, I started freaking out and yelled at her father that we needed to take her to the hospital, that something was very wrong! As I was putting her in her car seat she was reaching for me and grabbing her chest and gasping for air so I took her out of her seat and told her father to call the ambulance instead. I took her inside the house in a complete panic while trying to calm her down. I saw her breathing machine (that she was given for seasonal allergies) and quickly put the mask on her. She sucked in the air from the mask forcefully over and over and finally began breathing better.
Once the ambulance got there (we lived out in the country) she was breathing ok on her own but she was freezing (which, I learned later, is another side effect of anaphylaxis). I had bundled her up in two or three blankets and was just rocking her. The paramedics checked her out and said she seemed ok but they could take her to the hospital to get her checked out further if I wanted to. I absolutely did, I wanted that and never wanted them to leave. I was terrified after experiencing her not being able to breathe and feeling so helpless, plus she still wasn’t acting right, she still seemed out of it.
On the way to the hospital she started perking up and acting more like herself and was asking the paramedic, she called him “The Truck Doctor”, a million questions. Right after we got to the hospital she broke out in a red rash from head to toe. This was now hours after her eating the cake. They gave her Benadryl (I had no idea to give her that or anything at that time, an EpiPen would have been ideal) and steroids and kept her there for a couple of hours to make sure she was ok. We were sent home with more steroids and Benadryl and were told to keep an eye on her. I don’t think I slept for days.
During a follow up with an Allergy Doctor, he explained more about food allergies and the severity of them and prescribed us an EpiPen and an inhaler, which came in handy for her with her dog allergies that she dealt with later on. We were also referred to the Children’s Hospital in Dallas to do a full panel allergy test, they did her whole back and that’s when we learned she was allergic to soy, eggs, peanuts, and dairy.
Thankfully she has since outgrown soy and can now have baked milk. Recently we learned that her blood tests show that she’s more allergic to walnuts than peanuts and that her egg and peanut allergies may not be as severe anymore. We are waiting on more testing for that.
I started Food Allergy Digest because I wanted to create a place for other families living with food allergies to be able to come to and find information, tips, tricks, and resources to make it easier for them on their journeys. I want to provide what I wish I had as I was learning to navigate this scary journey with my daughter. She was born in 2012 and thankfully, since then, there’s a lot more awareness, resources, available products, and information for food allergies. I’m always searching for more information, ways others are navigating life with food allergies, and recipes and want to share it all with others going through the same thing.