He Can’t Eat WHAT????

Boy, just when you start to feel comfortable and confident with the whole food allergy thing for your kids … you get the mystery reaction. (Frankly, I think that is a common occurrence for all parents, just insert a different issue for “food allergy” and I think most parents can relate.)

Here is what happened. We sailed through the holidays (from a food-allergy perspective, not from a “oh my God, I have a lot to do” perspective). Last night, we went over to my in-laws house for dinner and to visit with some out-of-town relatives. We were all enjoying ourselves when I look over and see Big Guy rubbing his eyes a lot while he is playing.

“Come over here, Big Guy. What’s with your eyes?” I asked. “I don’t know, but they really itch, Mommy,” he answered back. When he moved his hands away so I could see his eyes, I could see they were starting to get swollen, almost like he had hives underneath his lower lid. “What in the HELL is that????” I thought to myself. (No! I did not say that out loud to Big Guy.) We hightailed it into the kitchen to show Grandma J and she immediately grabbed the children’s benadryl from the cupboard. We talked him into talking a teaspoon and I cuddled with him in a dark bedroom. He kept saying the light hurt his eyes.

Immediately my mind is trying to figure out what in the world caused this reaction—dinner consisted of chicken, rice, and broccoli. He had a fig Newton after dinner and I let him have three teeny bites of a star sugar cookie my mother-in-law got from some other relatives. Was it the sugar cookie? When I gave it to him I knew there was a good chance there was butter in it, but he has been doing very good tolerating some dairy.

My husband came to check on us and asked what I fed him. When I told him I gave Big Guy a couple small bites of the star cookie, he pointed out that it could have had nuts in it.

Wow, that hadn’t occurred to me. TO ME! I am the ever-vigilant one with these food allergies. I am the one person in the WHOLE WORLD who tries to think of every possible “forbidden” thing that might be in a piece of food they want to eat. But, honestly, it had not entered my head that there might be nuts in these cut-out, tasted like butter/sugar cookies.

And at the same time, my mind is racing watching and listening to Big Guy to make sure his breathing has not been affected. And I am trying to remember where I left the epipen (in my purse, where it ALWAYS is) in case I need to use it. Luckily, his reaction to who-knows-what didn’t get any worse and the wonderful benadryl did the trick.

Overall, he is okay. But this kind of thing makes me crazy. I want to know what evil villain did this to my baby!!!! But, I probably won’t know for sure. That is one of the frustrating and scary things about food allergies.

So, for anyone out there is dealing with food allergies, actually for any parent: my one piece of advice, make sure you have children’s benadryl! And for those with food allergies, make sure you have the epipen. Thankfully I didn’t have to use it, but I was able to deal with the whole situation better because I knew that, if need be, I could use it and possibly save my child’s life.

Anyone else have a mystery reaction recently???