Tag: Allergies

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When I was around four years old, I went on a field trip to a park with a pond, and we fed the ducks. Unfortunately the duck food included peanuts. I rubbed my eyes after handling it, and they swelled shut. Fortunately this was long before my food allergies got really bad, so I only had to go into the doctor’s office, not the emergency room.

It might be my oldest memory related to food allergies, though it was something my parents and I already knew about. (I’ve quite literally had this allergy as long as I remember.)

Last month I went with my four-year-old son’s preschool class on a field trip to a park with a pond, and they fed the ducks.

It was a little unnerving!

Nothing happened this time around.

It got me thinking, though. I tried to remember as much as I could about the incident. Since I was so young, I’m not entirely sure how much is first-hand and how much is just remembering the story as it’s been retold. Memory is a tricky thing, nowhere near as accurate or stable as we’d like to think.

I wrote down the fragments I do remember, then asked my parents to tell me what they remembered about it. It was interesting to see what did — and didn’t — line up.

I remember a wide, curved pond, encircled by a wide sidewalk, with dense trees on the far side. The day is overcast, possibly drizzling a bit. A red box sits on a post, a vending machine for the duck food.

My parents are pretty sure it was the Woodbridge neighborhood in Irvine, which has two artificial lakes. The breadth and curvature fit. I’m not so sure about the trees, and the distance across seems too far, but it’s a big enough area that some part of the lake might fit.

My dad also remembers duck food dispensers “like gumball machines” along the shore, so I didn’t make those up.

OTOH, it was a summer day camp, so I’m probably wrong about the jackets and weather…but then I spent most of this week in June gloom, so who knows?

I remember looking at my face in a mirror. Not what I looked like, though I’m told I laughed like it was the most hilarious thing I’d ever seen.

The odd thing is that I picture a wall-mounted mirror on a tile background, but my dad remembers a handheld mirror.

I vaguely recall a crowd of children walking around in jackets, with maybe two or three adults, and the feeling of itchy, swollen eyes.

I didn’t remember the paramedics or my dad taking me to the doctor. Though now I can dredge up a faint memory of a van and an EMT looking at me. I picture an awning connected to a building, like you’d find at the drop-off point of a hospital or entryway of a hotel, with yellowish or off-white walls and glass doors. I’m not sure that location makes sense, though.

And one mystery that had baffled me: Why were there peanuts in the duck food? Was it like trail mix? Was it some sort of pellets with peanut butter as the glue?

It turns out we ran out of food from the dispenser and started tossing in bits of another kid’s peanut butter sandwich.

That’s kind of weird, because this time around, when we stopped for a snack, the child who sat nearest to us had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

It’s probably just as well that I made sure not to touch my eyes after helping feed the ducks.

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Teal Pumpkin

The idea behind the Teal Pumpkin Project is to offer alternate Halloween treats that aren’t candy, so that kids with severe food allergies can still go Trick-or-Treating. It started last year in Tennessee, and FARE picked it up and promoted it nationwide this year.

When I was a child, I always had to either decline or discard some of my Halloween candy because of my peanut allergy. Fortunately it wasn’t life-threatening for me at the time (that came later), so I could separate them out at the end of the night. A lot of kids develop severe allergies younger than I did, and a lot of them are sensitive enough that the risk of cross-contact — whether in the candy bowl or at the factory — is a major issue.

So in addition to candy, we picked up an assortment of pencils, plastic dinosaurs, hair ribbons and more, and kept them in a separate tray. We painted a fake pumpkin so we could keep it around (though we’ll have to go over it again with better paint or maybe a coat of primer next year), and set it out front where it could be seen from the street. (Update 2021: You can buy plastic pumpkins in teal from a lot of stores these days!)

I’m not sure how many of the kids who chose the toys over the candy did so because of allergies, but we had enough of both to go around.

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15 Million Reasons to WalkIf you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I have a severe food allergy to peanuts. Last summer, two sips of a coffee drink sent me to the emergency room (during Comic-Con, which was really annoying). I’m not alone: estimates are that 15 million people have food allergies in the US alone, and one of us makes that trip to the ER every 3 minutes.

The causes of food allergies are still not completely understood, so preventing them isn’t possible yet. (The hygiene hypothesis is a popular one, but it’s far from settled.) And while new therapies show a lot of promise, there’s still no cure. We’re stuck with avoiding our triggers as much as possible — sometimes complicated by dealing with people who don’t understand or don’t care — and carrying emergency medication to keep us alive when we do have to go to the ER.

Candy clawFor the past three years, my family has participated in the Walk for Food Allergy. It’s a charity event that raises funds for FARE, an organization dedicated to allergy research, education, awareness and advocacy. Some examples of their work include funding research into treatments, educating the food industry on allergen safety, and getting life-saving medication into schools, where children often experience their severe first allergic reaction before even being diagnosed.

This year’s Los Angeles event is happening earlier than last year, in September, and has moved from Long Beach to Torrance. We’ve just signed up, and would appreciate it if you’d please donate to the walk on our behalf.

Thank you!

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Wow. A study finds that only 54% of patients experiencing an anaphylactic episode requiring an ER visit or hospitalization get an epinephrine prescription within a year, and only 22% visit an allergist or immunologist in that time. (via this week’s FARE newsletter)

The article treats this as an education/compliance issue, but I have two big questions:

  1. How many of these patients discussed the incident with their regular doctor? It’s possible that more than 22% followed up with a doctor, just not with a specialist.
  2. How does insurance coverage correlate? If you don’t have insurance, it’s expensive to see a specialist, and expensive to get an Epi-pen (though there are generics now that are a bit cheaper)…especially after you’ve just received a bill for thousands of dollars for the emergency room.

Regarding #2, the study looked at “healthcare claims,” so if I’m reading that correctly, they may have only looked at people who do have insurance. If that’s the case, I wonder if it would be possible to break it down by type of insurance: HMO vs. PPO, do they charge a higher co-pay for specialists, etc. Our current system could do a lot more to encourage preventative care.

For the record: The first thing I did when I got home from that San Diego trip was to order a replacement Epi-Pen, and Monday morning, I called up my allergist to schedule an appointment. But then, I already had an allergist, a prescription, and insurance.

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Ice cream bowls and peanuts.September. How the time flies, huh? It’s time to start focusing on autumn plans, and one of those is the 2013 Walk for Food Allergy, coming up in Long Beach at the end of October. This will be our third year participating in the event (you can see photos from last year), which raises money for FARE* and their mission to promote food allergy research and education, and to advocate on behalf of people living with severe allergies.

Fifteen million people have food allergies in the US alone, including six million children. For us, just eating is a constant source of risk.

ER Monitor and Comic-Con WristbandI left Comic-Con in an ambulance this year because I had two sips of a coffee drink with peanuts in it. I knew right away, but the shop had to call the owner to confirm it because the mix wasn’t labeled. It could have been worse, though. I walked out of the emergency room that evening. One week later, a 13-year-old in Sacramento didn’t make it to the hospital. Surviving Comic-Con meant more than usual this year.

We can’t cure allergies yet. We don’t know how to prevent them from developing in the first place. There’s only so much each of us can do to avoid our particular triggers if people around us don’t know — or worse, aren’t willing — to be careful with food they handle and to know what’s in it.

That’s where organizations like FARE come in. They sponsor research into identifying the causes of allergies and finding treatments. They provide training materials for the food industry. Over the last few years they’ve been pushing for stock epinephrine in schools, since many allergic children experience their first anaphylactic reaction at school, before they’ve even been diagnosed with an allergy. This year they’ve also been trying to combat allergy-related bullying.

You can help by sponsoring us in the walk. Your donation will help FARE work toward long-term solutions through research and more immediate solutions through education and advocacy. We’re in this together, and need your support.

*FARE (Food Allergy Research and Education) is the merged organization made up of what used to be FAAN (Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network) and FAI (Food Allergy Initiative).