“It sure seems like there are a lot more kids with “peanut” allergies”, I overhear a woman say at the supermarket.  She emphasizes the peanut with an eye ball roll while gabbing away on her phone seemingly selecting lunch-box snacks.  “Packing snacks is soooo stressful.”

It was all that I could do not to knock the iphone out of her perfectly manicured fingers and inform her that choosing nut-free snacks isn’t stressful.  Sending your highly allergic kid to school that is populated with a handful of self-centered, ignorant parents like you is stressful!  A kid so allergic that he could die if he ingested so much as a mouthful of brownie contaminated with peanuts or tree-nuts!  And no, they are not the same thing!  Bitch.

It never ceases to amaze me that despite the abundance of information distributed by the schools and the media people continue to believe that the diagnosis of nut/peanut allergies (and so many others for that matter) are a brought on by hysterical parents or worse still, parents eager to belong to the “trendy” no-nuts club.

When my eldest son had his first allergic reaction to peanuts it was scary.  His tiny lips began to swell and hives inched over his body, claiming surface area like high tide.

After the diagnosis was confirmed by two different allergist, I accepted what I already knew was true.  He was allergic.  Selfishly, I cried.  I cried because we would never share a Reese Peanut Buttercup straight from the freezer.  I cried because we would never eat a bag of peanuts and marvel at the mess of shells that we created.  I cried because he would never be able to share my obsession with Nutella.

I quickly stopped feeling sorry for my son and myself, and started counting myself lucky that we’re dealing with Epi-pens instead of other much more terrifying scenarios.

Together, as a family we educated ourselves about allergies and reactions.  We educated our son to never share his snacks and to always ask an adult if a packaged good contains nuts.  We showed him where the ingredient list on a package is.

We want him to feel in control of his allergies.  I want him to know that there are risks he will have to live with and that the world isn’t going to cater to him.  However, for the time being he is just a little boy and I want him to experience the carefree life of a child, for example, eating a piece of chocolaty birthday cake with his friends at school.

“People aren’t going to get how severe it is until someone dies”, said the leading allergist in Toronto to me at my son’s most recent appointment after I told him what I overheard.  Each year my son is re-checked but the results remain unchanged.  “It boggles my mind that people are so callus about a child’s health.”  Just as the words come from his mouth, he passes me an Epi-pen and says, “Quick.  I am having an allergic reaction.”

He does this every time that I am in his tiny office, seated on the chair beside his desk.  I take the Epi-pen from him, remove the cap and press it into his thigh and hold it.  I look up at him and see that he is satisfied.  Regardless that this is an annual test for parents, I still get sweaty palms and can hear the blood pounding in my ears when I hold the trainer epi-pen on his leg.

My son has never had to experience a rush of epinephrine injected into his thigh that my two hands can encircle and I hope he never has to.

Two of my three sons suffer from allergies.  The jury is still on the baby, but if this were Vegas I’d lay down serious cash that he too will erupt in painful, itchy hives when it’s his turn to be pricked with serum from every nut and legume known to cause fatalities.   I don’t know why my kids are so highly allergic but trust me when I say that there is no self-made hysteria nor secret longing to be “in”.

For parents who do not live with allergic children, I fully understand how confusing it is to wade through the overwhelming facts and for the most part people are conscientious and respectful of children’s allergies. They generally ask questions when they don’t understand or are feeling uncertain.

It’s the ignorant that worry me.  The ones who believe this to be a made-up illness, who feel inconvenienced when forced to purchase nut-free snacks.

My question to those people is, which is more inconvenient: buying nut-free granola bars or plunging a needle loaded with adrenaline into a terrified child’s thigh?  

For more information check out: www.anaphylaxiscanada.ca

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