Completing the Allergy Superheroes Rogues' Gallery

It's been a while, but I wanted to share the rest of the Allergy Superheroes villains here on the blog. With these four characters, our Rogue's Gallery is complete! (For now.)

You can see the entire Rogue's Gallery here!

NUTZILLA
Nutzilla was created when a radioactive explosion caught a poor, helpless lizard in the middle of a nut farm. The resulting DNA-scrambling mutation grew at immense speed until she reached a height of 35 feet tall.

Nutzilla is still an animal, so her main goals are to survive. She primarily eats nuts, though she will settle for animals when nuts aren’t in season. She prefers to shelter underneath walnut or pecan trees when the weather gets bad. She generally remains in the country except when conditions force her to search for food elsewhere.

Already a menace due to her large size and ability to eat people in a single bite, Nutzilla is particularly dangerous to those with nut allergies because her scales are made of tree nuts. And because she scatters nut residue over an area the size of a football field when feeding.

FISHAZOID
Fishazoid doesn’t know where his power came from. All he knows is that first he was content to swim with the school, but there was something fishy about that patch of murky water he swam through one day, and the ocean just didn’t seem big enough anymore.

The world above the water seemed ripe for the taking, so Fishazoid used his newfound brainpower to construct a Mecha-suit out of parts scavenged from sunken boats and submarines.

The world of land had bigger fish to fry than he’d anticipated, but he still wanted it all. Right at this moment he is making plans for world domination, encouraged by the fact that people with fish allergies, in particular, are intimidated by him. But the Allergy Superheroes have no intention of letting this freaky fish harm anyone with a fish allergy. Or take over the world.

MEDUSOY
Medusoy is the fabled Medusa’s lesser-known little sister. One look at her can’t turn you into stone, but she has been known to paralyze soy-allergic victims with fear.

Medusoy has a severe case of stage fright, which has kept her out of the spotlight for centuries. However, the recent increase in soy allergies got her thinking that she could claim some of the glory usually attributed to her sister. However, Medusoy is too timid for a direct attack, preferring to lurk in unsuspecting corners in order to catch people by surprise.

CHEF CROSS
There was once a magician who also worked a side job as a cook. He wanted his magic to pay his bills but it didn’t, so he was angry a lot. One day he decided to put magic into a black top hat. He tried spell after spell, but all the magic went into the chef hat the magician wore at his restaurant job.

He wore this newly-magical hat to work, where he spent the evening fuming about all of the “special requests” from the diners. He didn’t really believe that simply touching one food to another would hurt a customer with food allergies, and he resented all the extra steps he had to take every time an “allergy order” came in. Chef Cross, the hat who had just been magicked to life, quickly shared the magician’s anger about food allergies and longed to cross contaminate a plate, just to see what would happen.

The next day, the magician threw Chef Cross away--but being alive he set off on his own. Chef Cross learned, as he searched for another home, that he had a psychic power over anyone whose head he sat upon; particularly over the foods they ate or touched.

The Allergy Superheroes are constantly working to educate other about the dangers of cross contact, in order to counteract the influence of Chef Cross and others who don’t understand the dangers of food allergies.

So now you've seen them all! Which Food Allergy Villain is your Nemesis?

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Doughnuts!

My husband Dean has taken over the blog today! Or more accurately, he offered to write a guest post now and then to free up some time for me. I gladly accepted!

www.allergysuperheroes.com

Dean is my partner in all things, especially in Allergy Superheroes. Without him, I don't think this crazy venture would've gotten off the ground because I just wouldn't have been able to get it all done by myself. In fact, he came up with the Spark that morphed into Allergy Superheroes in the first place! And if you've engaged with us on social media at all, there's a good chance you've interacted with him and not me a time or two!

So without further ado, I'll hand the blog over to him!


This is Dean, husband to Eileen or as you know her, the 2nd Generation Allergy Mom. For the last few years the fathers/kids in our family have gotten together to make the mothers a special Mother's Day Brunch. We're each expected to make a couple of dishes. Besides the usual eggless pancakes, I decided to make two types of doughnuts. (I'm on a bit of a homemade, baked doughnut kick right now). The first is a chocolate chocolate chip and the next one is for another blog post. Hint, it has oatmeal and blueberries.

I only have one doughnut pan and making two different types of doughnuts was going to take a lot of time, so I wanted something I was familiar with that would be fast and easy. After a look on our Pinterest page for egg-free options, I took the chocolate and chocolate chip amounts from another recipe and modified the baked doughnut recipe that came with our doughnut pan. It's pretty simple and quick to bake.

Free From:  Egg, Peanut, Tree Nut, Fish, Shellfish (happy about those last two).  It could be modified to be top 8 free.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups cake flour
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon Ener-G egg replacer mixed with 4 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spray doughnut pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In large mixing bowl, whisk together cake flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg, salt and cocoa. Add buttermilk, Ener-G, and butter. 

 Beat until just combined.

Stir in chocolate chips.

Fill each doughnut cup approximately 2/3 full.

Bake 7-9 minutes or until the top of the donuts spring back when touched. This is one of the reasons I love this recipe since they're baked in about 8 minutes.

Let them cool in the pan for 4-5 minutes before removing.

Then move to a wire rack.

Makes 12 doughnuts.

I decided to go the extra mile and frost them with our homemade cream cheese frosting recipe found here. Now being the food photo newbie that I am, (and in a hurry to get all those doughnuts made) I forgot to get a picture of the finished product. All I have is a zoomed in image of a picture of our table. You can see it on Eileen's plate. White frosted with sprinkles next to the pancakes that spell out M.O.M. I'll do better next time, I promise. The cream cheese frosted, chocolate chocolate chip doughnuts was a hit with the moms and especially with our kids.

But wait, Eileen just found a picture of her plate, so here it is:

What's your favorite doughnut recipe?

Linking up at Allergy Free Wednesdays

Meet the Food Allergy Villains

Here's something I meant to post a few weeks back, when we were first launching.

Our Food Allergy Villains aren't just snarling faces, they each have a history too! Let's take a look at Jet Trail and Arctic Storm's Rogue's Gallery:

Lex Legume

Lex was popular as a youngster, and quickly gathered worshippers around him.  Unfortunately, his lust for power didn’t stop at his peers, and soon he was hoarding money as well.

Lex became quite successful, but he was disturbed by the fact that not everyone loved him.  Then one day he discovered that a whole subset of the population was allergic to him.  He was a little nuts, so this discovery sent him over the edge.  He closed his businesses and turned to a life of crime, figuring that with all the peanut allergies, few would dare approach to stop him.

To this day, Lex is an illegal business overlord.  He’s quirky and a bit of a germophobe, as evidenced by the black gloves that he refuses to take off.

Professor Egg-stein

Professor Egg-stein was the result of an unfortunate accident involving his mother, his father, and a crowded henhouse.  While otherwise a human, Egg-stein’s head is genuinely an egg, and by sacrificing a little brain fluid, he has been known to threaten people with egg allergies.

The term “egg head” has been widely used as an insult against smart people, usually used by those who don’t study against the person who wrecks the grade curve.  Few people know that this term originated with Egg-stein.  While growing up, Egg-stein was teased relentlessly, not only for looking different but also for being smarter than everybody else.

Feeling that he would never fit in, Egg-stein became a criminal mastermind.  Few know it, but he is probably the smartest criminal in the world.

The Milkotaur

The Milkotaur took up residence in the legen-dairy labyrinth after Theseus killed the famed Minotaur.  For thousands of years, he demanded sacrifices of goat milk and goat cheese, which changed into cow milk and cheese as dairy farming evolved.  But as time passed and legends died out, his sacrifices were forgotten.  Enraged, the Milkotaur finally emerged from the labyrinth (after he found his way out) and he has been haunting the human race ever since.

The Celihawk

The Celihawk is a genetic mutation, the unfortunate result of birds of prey feeding on rodents fattened with GMO crops.  Celihawks are still birds of prey, but they contain gluten in their DNA.  Another mutation is that the Celihawk’s eyes tend to be bigger than its stomach, so it is known to attack anything from rodents to large mammals.  One Celihawk isn’t too big of a threat unless you have gluten issues, but when a swarm arrives, it’s best for everyone to take cover.

Celihawks have a natural fear of  jelly, Sunbutter, honey, and many other substances commonly spread on bread, so if caught in the open and facing a swarm, grabbing one of these foods and preparing to turn the predator into prey is your best defense.

CLAWS

CLAWS started out life as an ordinary crab in the Bering Sea, until an encounter with a fishing boat changed her life.  She lost her left claw in a narrow escape, and the experience made her into an enemy of humankind.  She studied people, studied our ships, and learned how to escape us dozens of times over.

Time passed, and despite her disability she never succumbed to a crab pot or a predator.  Living such a long life caused her to grow to an unnatural size, and she’s still growing.  CLAWS learned from our technology, and made herself a replacement claw from scrap metal in sunken ships.

Crews on the fishing boats began telling stories about her, and when these legends reached her ears, she decided it was time to venture into the land of men.  She is the worst enemy of those with shellfish allergies.  If you chase her with a vat of melted butter, she may retreat, but whatever you do, you need to stay out of range of those sharp claws!

Meet the Allergy Superheroes Heroes!

The Allergy Superheroes themselves have finally graduated from the Academy of Heroes!  I'm thrilled to introduce them to you!

Jet Trail and Arctic Storm will be appearing on some great allergy gear, coming up very soon!

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ARCTIC STORM

Arctic Storm is a wondrous young woman who has amazing ice powers.  She can freeze Villains in their tracks or build ice walls to keep them out.  She loves to ice skate, and gets around by making an ice path on the ground and skating along it on ice blades.

Arctic Storm happens to have food allergies.  She knows how isolating allergies can be, and so she focuses on anti-bullying.  She empowers kids with food allergies to remember that they are special and super, and that they don’t have to take bullying from anyone—not from kids, not from grown-ups, and not from the Food Allergy Villains!

HISTORY

Arctic Storm is the daughter of research scientists.  She has moved around a lot—mostly to places that are cold.  She doesn’t mind, however, because she loves outdoor winter activities.  She has always enjoyed sledding, snowshoeing, skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, and eating icicles.

Since she was often the new kid in school, Arctic Storm was quiet and shy, and not quite sure where fit in.  Unfortunately, school bullies exploited these traits and picked on her.  She usually stood her ground, but the bullying got worse when the bullies realized she had food allergies.  Arctic Storm again stood tall against their taunts, but worried that she wasn’t safe.

When Arctic Storm’s parents got jobs at a research station in Antarctica, she welcomed the chance to explore one of the world’s wild, untamed landscapes.  The isolation was a relief too—she was in her element in the snow and felt free to be herself.

Arctic Storm loved exploring—although she always obeyed her parents’ rules and kept the research station’s radio tower in sight.  While sledding one morning, she found a new fissure in the ice that was glowing green.  Upon closer inspection, she saw that the fissure went most of the way around a large shape buried under the ice.  She ran back to tell her parents about it, but not before snagging some green-tinted icicles to snack on.

Many scientists were interested in the green shape, but Arctic Storm was more concerned about herself.  After eating the green ice, she began to feel very strange.  She felt cold at first, and then unusually hot.  Her hands felt tingly, and she thought she could feel the movements in the ice and snow all around her.

Her mother tried to bring some hot tea, but Arctic Storm didn’t want anything hot.  She pushed the mug away, and to everyone’s surprise, the tea inside froze.  That was the moment when Arctic Storm realized she had ice powers.

Her body settled down after a few weeks, but the ice powers didn’t go away.  In fact, they got stronger.  Her parents took her back to the mainland, where she was quickly recruited by the Academy of Heroes.  There, she learned to master her powers.  She could freeze enemies in their tracks, she could build ice walls, and she could make a path of ice—and affix ice blades to her shoes—so that she could skate on her own ice.

Becoming a part of the Allergy Superheroes helped Arctic Storm grow as a person.  For the first time, she was an important part of an important group, and she loved having friends around her.  Now that she’s graduated from the Academy, she focuses on preventing kids with food allergies from getting bullied by anyone—peers, adults, or the Food Allergy Villains.

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JET TRAIL

Jet Trail is an amazing boy who can move things with his mind using a power called Telekinesis.  This is a fantastic power for a Superhero, because he can move heavy objects and also keep Villains far away.  Jet Trail loves things that fly, so he discovered that he could use telekinesis on himself to make himself fly.

Jet Trail also happens to have food allergies, but he doesn’t allow those food allergies to define him or slow him down.  He uses his Superhero training to keep other people with food allergies safe by fighting off the Food Allergy Villains.  He wants to remind other allergic kids that having a food allergy doesn’t make them any less super!

HISTORY

To begin with, Jet Trail was just an ordinary boy who loved everything that could fly:  birds, planes, helicopters, hang gliders, kites, blimps, hot air balloons… even paper airplanes.  If it could hang in the air, Jet Trail loved it.  He spent hours watching planes take off and land at a nearby airstrip, and he was going to be a pilot when he grew up—just like his dad.

Nobody thought there was anything different about Jet Trail until one day at the age of four, when he tried to reach a container of cookies on top of the refrigerator.  He wasn’t tall enough to reach them, but when he stretched his hand up toward the enticing prize, the container came down to his hand magically.  Thrilled, Jet Trail dug in.

Unfortunately, this amazing new ability proved to Jet Trail’s family that they couldn’t keep allergenic foods in the house.  The cookies had been out of reach because they contained ingredients that Jet Trail was allergic to, but fortunately his mother witnessed the extraordinary event, stopped him from eating more than a few bites, and took care of his resulting allergic reaction right away.  Jet Trail learned three things that day:  1) to always check the safety of a food before eating it, 2) that Epinephrine saves lives and should always be kept nearby, and 3) that he had the ability to move things with his mind—a power called telekinesis.

Shortly after, officials from the Academy of Heroes recruited Jet Trail and helped him learn how to control his powers.  He could be an amazing force of good in the world, if only he would use his powers to help people.  That became Jet Trail’s goal in life—to become a Superhero and to help people.

Jet Trail became very good at using his telekinesis over the next few years.  As long as he could see an object, he could move it; although the closer he was, the more precise he would be.

Through all of his training, Jet Trail was still obsessed with flight.  So one day he told his instructors that he wanted to try levitating himself.  They set up plenty of padding on the ground and agreed to let Jet Trail try to fly.  To everyone’s surprise and delight, it worked!  It took Jet Trail more than a year to gain full control (because using his powers on other objects was much different than using them on himself) but he eventually became a master flyer.

Jet Trail was thrilled to combine his love of flying with becoming a Superhero.  He promises to do his best to protect your little heroes from the Food Allergy Villains!

Walnuts Scare Me

This is a repost from my old blog.  The blog was about my writing life and unrelated to food allergies, except that, in March of 2012, I shared my experience with giving Zax walnuts (my very worst allergen) for the first time.  It was an emotional adventure, as you'll see below.

Walnuts Scare Me
originally posted March 17, 2012 on Science Fiction Mommy

You probably don't know this about me, but I have severe food allergies.  I'm allergic to tree nuts.  I don't think I've ever mentioned this before, in large part because it doesn't take up much mental effort on my part.  I've been allergic since I was tiny, so label reading, asking questions, and avoiding certain foods/situations are all par for the course.  I've been bitten on occasion if I assume too much (after all, who puts nuts in egg rolls?), but by and large the situation is under control.

By the same token, I don't have to expend too much energy on Zaxxon's food allergies either.  The little guy unfortunately inherited my flawed genes, and is allergic to egg (confirmed) and peanut (unconfirmed.)  When we went to the allergist after his first taste of scrambled egg, my primary reaction was "Really?  He didn't get the memo that he was supposed to take after his Daddy?  *dramatic sigh*"  And then I incorporated egg and peanut into my existing food avoidance routine and moved on.  It wasn't the earth-shattering diagnosis it is for newly-initiated allergy parents (like my parents nearly 30 years ago) because I already knew how to live with it.  The allergist and pediatrician also advised that we keep tree nuts out of Zaxxon's diet until he was three or four as a precaution because of my allergies, even through skin tests were negative.  Which we've done.

Well, Zaxxon is now three.  He communicates fairly well.  He still doesn't have the words for a lot of things, but he can say enough to give us the idea of what's going on, especially when we ask him questions.  And even though he's never going to encounter tree nuts regularly (at least not in this household,) I'd like to know whether we have anything to fear from accidental exposures.  So I've decided it's time to introduce him to tree nuts.

Our first forays were uneventful--and inconclusive.  He said he didn't like the foods we offered him, which consisted of an Almond Joy from his Halloween candy and a piece of Pecan Tart from hubby's Christmas treats.  Nothing happened after these tastes, but I wanted to be certain "I don't like it" didn't mean "it makes my mouth feel funny."  So I enlisted my parents and in-laws to make eggless cookies and/or brownies with ground up nuts in them.  This way I could be certain he likes the delivery method enough to eat a significant amount of the nuts--thus ensuring me that nothing will happen.  My mother arrived the very next week with a bag of chocolate chip cookies.... with WALNUTS.

There's nothing like facing your fears head-on.  When it comes to other nuts, I can recognize them as food.  I'm disappointed when I learn that they're an ingredient in something that looks tasty, but they don't diminish a food's integrity.  I understand that other people like them.  Walnuts, however... well, they've got to be the scariest nuts on the face of the earth.  Even as an adult, when I learn that something has walnuts in it I wonder, "Why would anyone do something like that?  Why would you ruin a food?"

It's a reaction purely driven by instinct.  After all, walnuts are my kryptonite.  Every time I've had the misfortune to encounter them, they've knocked me flat.  (And really, who puts walnuts in egg rolls???)  So when Mom handed me that bag (carefully double-wrapped so I wouldn't touch the contamination) my blood pressure raised by a few points.

I pondered the repercussions for the rest of the day, until halfway through dinner I decided that that night would be the night.  Walnut cookies for dessert.  Then I proceeded to worry through the rest of dinner.  Zaxxon was in a funky mood already and didn't want to eat dinner very fast, which only served to extend my anxiety.  By the time he finally finished his dinner, I was wound as tight as a spring.  Then, with Epi-Pen tucked close in the pocket of my hoodie (I didn't want to hover and worry him, after all) I had hubby offer him one of the poisonous cookies.

I quite literally felt like I was holding a gun to my child's head.  I mean, these were walnuts.  Something was going to happen.  Something was supposed to happen.  That's just the way it is.  Nobody who eats cyanide thinks it tastes good.

Well, I'm happy to report that nothing happened.  Nothing except that he loved his Ama's cookies.  As the tension began to release, it was replaced by a new concern--concern for myself.  Have you ever seen a three-year-old eat a cookie?  Or any food, for that matter?  M-E-S-S-Y.  Crumbs everywhere.  Having hubby wash his face and hands afterwards wasn't going to be enough, the whole table needed a scrubbing.  With soap.  And his chair.  Plus, he made like he was going to touch every wall and surface between the table and the bathroom sink, which hubby had a job preventing.  Maybe this wasn't such a hot idea after all.

It wasn't until the fourth and final day of walnut cookies that hubby and I figured out that he ought to eat them outside.  Let the birds, bugs, and elements wash the allergens away for us.  Much easier that way.  Safer too.

I learned a lot of things during this experiment, mainly about myself, but also about how we're going to have to handle food allergies as Zaxxon (and Kal'El) get a little older.  For now, I'm happy to have the walnuts out of the house, and I'm very happy that they aren't going to kill my first baby.

Kal's Story ...part 2

Click here for part 1 of Kal's story

The day of Kal’s peanut challenge in April finally arrived, and Kal had miraculously remained healthy for more than a week prior to the test.  Zax even had an extended school day so we didn’t have to pick him up in the middle of the test, which meant that hubby and I could both attend the challenge.  We were psyched for a potentially three-hour test.  We had toys and games, the office had toys and movies, and we had chocolate to help make the medicine go down.  Everything was aligned.

The first thing they said upon our arrival was that it had been nearly a year since Kal’s peanut skin test, so they wanted to perform another one.  Even as I consented, I began to feel irritated.  We were ready for a three-hour test, but I knew that if the skin test yielded higher results this time around, they would halt it right then and there--and just like with Zax, I was going to need to know whether the allergy was real no matter how big the number.   What was even more annoying was the fact that Kal and I could easily have come in prior to challenge day for a skin test and gotten that part over with.

Over the next several minutes, I knew that things were not going well.  The welt on his back grew to quite a large size.  When the aides came back in, they were shocked at the size of his reaction.  As was entirely predictable, they were unwilling to perform an oral food challenge now without the doctor’s approval.

What followed was a whole mix of emotions for me.  Just like with Zax, I needed to know whether the reaction was a false positive or indicative of a real allergy, which meant I needed to have him do a food challenge.  But more than that, I felt horrible about having waited so long.  I’d heard that delaying introduction could actually increase the chances of an allergy, and that seemed to be exactly what had happened.  It hadn’t seemed like a very big concern until now.  I tried not to get too preoccupied with this theory--after all, it was possible that his first skin result was small and all subsequent results would be larger, much like an initial oral reaction can be minor but later oral reactions can be increasingly severe.  In fact, this second theory has comforted me somewhat.  It makes me feel less like I created a preventable peanut allergy in Kal.

But at any rate, we weren’t done yet.  I spoke at length with our allergist, having the same argument I’d had before we did Zax’s peanut challenge.  I’m not comfortable saying that my children have allergies without a reaction.  Kal would be starting preschool in the fall, and I wanted to know before then.  I had a history of false positives, and I wanted to make sure that Kal’s reaction was real and not a false positive of his own.

Because of the extreme nature of Kal’s skin reaction, our allergist was even less willing to let Kal do the challenge than she had been for Zax.  “Aren’t we the anomaly?” I asked.  “Don’t most people come to you only after having a real-world reaction, rather than doing testing before eating a food?”

“Yes,” she replied.  “And some of them go straight into anaphylaxis the first time they eat a food.  Do you really want to risk that?”

“If it means his first exposure is in a controlled environment where all the drugs are readily available, thereby reducing the chances that we would find out by accident in a much more dangerous setting, then yes.”

The allergist finally granted us a reduced sort of food challenge.  The first thing she wanted to do was spread peanut butter on his skin and wait to see if anything happened.  Then we would proceed to spreading some on his lips.  Even if he failed to react to this, she didn’t want to take the test any farther.  We would be assured that he wouldn’t react to casual contact, and thought that ought to be enough for us.

It wouldn’t have been, of course.  I knew that if Kal passed this challenge, I would be back on the phone, pushing for another challenge to still find out whether or not Kal had an allergy.  But one thing at a time.  This might be all we would need in order to confirm an allergy.  So shortly after Kal’s third birthday, we performed the challenge.

Kal had no reaction to the peanut butter on his skin.  Next they brushed some on his lips.  Unlike with Zax’s test, they told Kal not to lick at his lips--a feat he managed fairly well for a few minutes.

About ten minutes later, Kal said that his lip hurt.  Upon inspection, the skin below his lower lip was turning red.  Well, darn.  Another allergy confirmed.  We ended the challenge and they gave him Benadryl.  Then we stayed for observation.

Zax and Kal’s peanut challenges weren’t exactly equal, since Zax licked his off right away and Kal only licked a little bit, but I still found it interesting the differences between their reactions.  Both of them had level 4 skin reactions, but Kal’s was much larger.  However Zax was screaming within a minute of the peanut butter touching his lips, and Kal took ten minutes to complain that his lip hurt.  In fact, hubby and I couldn’t help but observe that Kal’s challenge was a bit anticlimactic.  After all the warnings and concerns that he was going to drop dead the moment peanut butter touched his skin, his reaction was much smaller than his brother’s.  Which is a big part of why I pushed for the challenge--because no matter how helpful they are, skin tests aren’t infallible, nor a perfect indicator of what will happen.

The hardest part about Kal’s diagnosis has been the fact that we haven’t been thinking of him as allergic until four months ago.  The safety routines we’ve done with Zax since infancy have helped Kal by association, but we’re only just beginning to teach Kal the vocabulary he needs to use, and helping him to realize that certain foods can hurt him.

The good news about Kal is that at the same time that we confirmed his peanut allergy, we also got him a prescription for albuterol in an inhaler.  We’d been concerned about what we would do if he needed treatment during preschool, and they told us that some little kids can get the hang of an inhaler with a spacer and mask, and that he could take several breaths through the spacer--he didn’t need to get it all in one breath.  They demonstrated the method, and we took our new prescription home.

I have to say that I LOVE giving Kal his inhaler.  It makes life so much easier.  No more making Kal wait for treatment in the morning.  No more trying to figure out how to schedule another 20 minute TV session for another neb.  The last few times Kal has gotten a cold, I’ve been able to set a timer for 4 hours and give Kal treatment the maximum number of times during the day.  And in my opinion, it has helped a great deal.  He’s gotten over the last few colds much more quickly than before.  Of course, because he’s only 3, Kal doesn’t do every puff as well as he ought, but it still works much better than previously.  I love using the inhaler so much, I’ll be asking for his Pulmacort in this form the next time I take Kal to the doctor.

Kal is just beginning to learn how to deal with this life our family lives.  We have high hopes that he will turn into a good self-advocate, just like his brother.

Kal's Story ...part 1

When Zax was a baby, the prevailing infant feeding advice was to delay introduction of highly allergenic foods.  However, by the time Kal joined our family in June 2011, I’d seen a lot more advice suggesting that allergenic foods should be introduced earlier to lower the baby’s chances of developing allergies.  I asked our allergist whether she recommended that, but she thought that with both a brother and a mother with allergies, we should still delay allergenic foods for Kal.  This is advice I regret taking, but more on that later.

Our infant Kal seemed to be in better shape than his brother had been as a baby.  Kal never had any eczema, and we successfully introduced eggs to him at 10 months without any problems.  He had a couple potential issues with other foods, but nothing we could nail down as a reaction.  The skin around one eye got red a few times, but in each case it seemed just as likely that he’d rubbed food in his eye than that he was having an allergic reaction.  We were a bit wary at times, but in each case we were able to successfully re-introduce the troubling food without incident a few weeks later.

We successfully introduced Kal to all of the “big 8” foods except peanut and tree nut by his early toddler years.  In fact, we even got him introduced to a few tree nuts too--as we slowly tried some of those on Zax, we tried Kal as well.  And he tolerated them just fine.  (You can read “we” as “hubby.”  I watched from a safe distance with Zax’s EpiPen clutched firmly in my pocket, not wanting to get too close to messy eaters eating my personal poison.)

During the summer after Kal turned one, he started coughing and I assumed he was getting a cold.  However, the cough lasted for a long time and Kal never showed any other signs of sickness.  I wasn’t sure what was going on with him.  Then one day, I caught myself reaching for my inhaler because the wildfire smoke in the air was giving me trouble breathing.  I stopped cold, realizing that if the smoke was bothering me (with asthma,) and Kal was coughing with no known cause, but hubby and Zax were fine, then that probably meant that Kal had asthma too.

Off we went again to Colorado Allergy and Asthma Center to see what they thought of Kal’s lungs.  They were unable to officially give him an “asthma” diagnosis because he was too young to perform lung function tests (the way to diagnose someone with asthma has apparently changed since I was a kid.)  They did listen to him, and examined him, and gave him a nebulizer treatment of albuterol in the office.  They decided that, at the very least, Kal had Reactive Airway Disease, and sent us home with a prescription for albuterol.

Such was it that a nebulizer came into our household.  At the beginning, Kal HATED the nebulizer.  He would cry and squirm his way through the entire treatment, and we would have to hold the mask firmly over his face to make sure he inhaled everything.  We tried talking to him and reading to him and having his big brother dance around in front of him.  Finally, we gave in and let him watch TV, and that was what finally distracted him enough to stop crying through the treatments.

The TV felt like a minor defeat, because we had been trying (pretty successfully) to follow the AAP suggestion that children not get any screen time until the age of 2.  We had managed this with Zax, with the exception of home videos and the occasional big event (like a Superbowl Party.)  We’d been doing the same with Kal, limiting Zax’s screen time to Kal’s naps, until the nebulizer.  But what else can you do when sitting still with a one-year-old for 20 minutes every day?

After a few weeks, I was sure that the nebs were helping Kal.  Not only would it improve his symptoms, but there was one day when I was getting settled to hold Kal on my lap for the neb.  He reached for the mask and pulled it to his face.  Quite quickly.  I knew then that Kal must be getting relief from the nebulizer.

A few months later, as we entered into cold season, our doctor suggested that we use a daily inhaled steroid in addition to the as-needed albuterol.  We’ve occasionally tried to back off from this during non-cold seasons, but for the most part, this is when we established our current bedtime routine:  pajamas, teeth, nebulizer while watching a 20 minute TV show, stories, bed.

The nebulizer has been a blessing, except when it’s not.  I love that Kal’s meds go straight to his lungs just like an inhaler, rather than being metabolized all over his body like the oral meds I had as a baby (which used to make me incredibly hyperactive in addition to the struggle it was for me to take them,) but I dislike how long it takes to get him treated.  During a cold, when they want us to give him the steroid twice a day in addition to as-needed albuterol treatments, we can be looking at a couple hours on the couch every day.  That can be very hard to do, especially when we have to schedule things around his older brother’s school/activities.  On more than one occasion we’ve come home late from an evening activity and had to make a tough choice:  deprive Kal of a half-hour of sleep in order to do a neb, or send him to bed on time but deprive him of the nebulizer.  This is particularly hard if we suspect he’s getting sick--extra sleep is what the body needs in order to fight off the infection, but if his lungs aren’t functioning properly he won’t fight it off anyway.  It’s a decision I hate to make, but one that continually comes up because life gets in the way.

I also hate it when Kal wakes up and clearly needs treatment right away.  We are not morning people, and our mornings typically have exactly enough time to get ready and out the door to wherever we need to be.  I often had to make Kal wait until his brother got to preschool before giving him a neb--but I’ve woken up having difficulty breathing, I know how it feels, and it always tore at my heart to make him wait for treatment.

When Kal turned 2, we went back to CAAC for a post-cold-season assessment.  They recommended that we scratch-test him for some allergies to see if his asthma had any underlying triggers, and I agreed.  I didn’t get what I expected, however.  I thought they’d been referring to environmental allergens, but in that regard, they only tested him for three molds and for cat and dog.  The rest of the test was devoted to peanuts and tree nuts.  I’m not sure why anyone in the office thought those could be underlying triggers, because he never ate them.  In fact, the few tree nuts he occasionally ate (Nutella) they didn’t test him for, because he ate it successfully at home.  I was irritated at how that was handled, but the fact remains that the test was done.

The results said that Kal was allergic to cat, dog and peanut.  Cat was the only significant reaction, however.  Dog and peanut were both small.  In fact, they said that peanut was below the threshold at which people can usually eat it safely.  They recommended we do peanut as an in-office food challenge for his first taste, however, because of our family history of allergies.  Just in case.

Hubby and I hemmed and hawed over this suggestion.  Should we do the food challenge just to get it over with?  Should we wait until he was a little older and better able to communicate how he feels (like we’d done for Zax)?  Should we just challenge peanut ourselves at home?  We couldn’t agree, and eventually our indecision turned into inaction as other concerns pushed this to the back of our minds.

Months passed, and then one day during the winter, the allergist’s office called and asked if we wanted to schedule a peanut challenge since we’d already signed the release forms.  I decided to make a decision at that point, and said yes.  Yes, let’s schedule a peanut challenge for Kal.  The food challenge schedule was full for the next few months, though, so we set a date in February and sat back to wait.

February, of course, is smack in the middle of cold season, and much to our chagrin, Kal started coming down with a cold two days before his scheduled challenge.  They’d told us they wanted him healthy for the week prior to his test, which seemed like a tall order for a toddler in cold season, but this particular cold was too strong to even consider fudging the rule.  It was just starting up, he was miserable, and there was no way we were going to be able to perform the test.  The food challenge office was about to go through some staffing changes, which meant we couldn’t reschedule until April.  Grumble grumble.  More waiting.

Check back Friday for the rest of Kal's story!

Zax's Story ...part 2

Click here for part 1 of Zax's story

At 3 ½, Zax was getting ready to go to preschool, and I decided it was time for us to know more.  Specifically, I wanted to know two things:

1. Could he tolerate egg in baked items? (Many egg-allergic people can.)
2. Was he really allergic to peanut?

Zax’s allergist was more than willing to grant him a food challenge for a baked item with egg in it, but she pushed back hard when I suggested we do a peanut challenge.  “His skin test is a 4,” she told me.  “It’s very inadvisable.”  I told her I understood her arguments but asked her to listen to mine.  In the first place, I wasn’t comfortable calling him peanut-allergic indefinitely without a clinical reaction.  If he wasn’t allergic, there was no point in us living such a paranoid lifestyle.  Some people might be content with just test results, but that wasn’t me.  In the second place, I knew, not only from the internet but from personal experience that false positives on those tests are relatively common, and since his genes were partially my genes, it seemed plausible that he might have inherited the propensity for them.  And lastly I mentioned the JC Penny incident (see Zax's story part 1).  Yes, it wasn’t conclusive since he hadn’t bitten into the peanut m&m, but since nothing at all had happened I thought it was worth a closer look.

I think it was my final argument that swayed her.  Grudgingly, she agreed to the challenge, after wanting me to understand again (and again, and again) that she still advised against it.  I understood, and we went forward.

We scheduled the baked egg challenge first, figuring it would be less traumatic if both challenges were positive (and we didn’t want his fears/behaviors to get in the way of the test results.)  They asked me to bake something that required two eggs, baked at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, and bring one piece (1/12) of it.  A box of brownies did the trick.

The day of the test, we got situated in our allergist’s food challenge room (which, fortunately, was filled with movies and TOYS!)  The aides started by checking his vitals and examining his skin.  Then they cut the brownie in 1/4ths and fed him them at fifteen-minute intervals.  Shortly after he ate his second small serving, he reported that his throat hurt.  The aides checked him over and saw no visible symptoms, and then told me that while they weren’t seeing anything, his report told them he was starting a histamine reaction and that if we kept going, it was only going to get worse.

I was surprised that she seemed to be expecting me to push for more, and that she sounded willing to do so if I insisted.  “I was done,” I told her.  “I’ve felt that feeling, I believed him, and I knew exactly what it meant.  All we wanted to know was whether he could tolerate baked egg, and now we had our answer.”  They treated him with Benadryl.  Then we waited (and played) for observation before heading home.

He later told me he’d started to feel funny after just ¼ of the brownie, but he had wanted more chocolate.  He hadn’t wanted any more by the time we called the test quits.  Doing the math, that means he was reactive to at least 1/24^th of an egg, and had sounded the alert at 1/12^th.  Not that it matters, but I’m a numbers person.

A few hours and a Benadryl-induced nap later, the reaction came back for round two in the form of a horrible stomachache and diarrhea.  While I’ve heard that allergic reactions can cause these symptoms, I’d never before seen or experienced them as part of a reaction to food allergy.  My theory is that I, personally, had never been able to ingest enough nuts for them to wreak havoc on my digestive tract on the way out, and Zax never had before either.  This time, however, since he’d eaten a significant amount of the egg, it was going to have to go all the way through him.  He also reported that his throat hurt again, but a different hurt, and when I looked into his mouth I saw that he had several canker sores.  We called the doctor (who said canker sores were possible but rare after allergic reaction), and we re-dosed with more Benadryl and Zyrtec.  He had a painful few hours, but finally it was over.

The next step, a few weeks later, was the peanut challenge.  I was relieved that the ladies performing the test weren’t giving us any flak that would make us feel like bad parents.  We needed to know, so there we were.  Despite his reaction to the egg, Zax was thrilled to be back in the food challenge room because it meant he could play with the cool toys again.

The peanut challenge was done more incrementally.  The first step would be to rub a dab of peanut butter on his lips, and if nothing happened, we would move forward in larger and larger doses.  My husband and I brought along chocolate chips to eat with the peanut butter, in case he didn’t like the flavor on its own.

Once again the ladies took all his vitals, and then they placed a dab of peanut butter on Zax’s lips and rubbed it around like chapstick.  He licked at it a bit and said “Mmm!”  “Good sign,” I thought.  Once again, the ladies said they’d be in the next room if we needed them.

Less than a minute later, Zax was screaming.  “NO!” he kept repeating, and saying he didn’t like it.  He wanted water.  I told my husband to run and get the aides while I carried him to the sink.  He tried to rinse his mouth out when the ladies came rushing back.  They looked at him and his mouth very briefly, and then whipped out the epinephrine.  He was scared of the shot and knocked the aid’s hand away, so she had to stick him twice.  After the epinephrine, they also gave him Benadryl, a 24-hour antihistamine, and a steroid that should prevent inflammation.  Considering his complications the previous time, they wanted to cover all his bases.  We stuck around for another hour, with frequent checks by the aides.  Before long he reported that he felt fine, and during their final check he said that he felt good all the way down to his toes.

I wanted to make sure Zax understood what to look out for in the future, so after both of these challenges, once the smoke had cleared but the memories were still fresh, I got up close to him and asked him to remember what he felt like.  “Remember hard, so you won’t forget it.  And if you ever feel this way again, tell a grown-up.”  Even an allergic reaction can be a teaching moment.  To this day, if he starts to have an allergic reaction, (and he’s had a few minor ones) he reports that his mouth “feels like egg.”

Statistics say that kids are likely to outgrow egg as an allergy, but Zax is approaching his sixth birthday and hasn’t done so yet.  I try not to get my hopes up about that.  If he outgrows it (or any of his allergies), great, but if not it just means he’ll become an allergic adult, like me.  And whatever happens, we’ll deal with it.

From this summer.  Foods are on the
right, egg and peanut are the top two
and Brazil nut is the third

At one of Zax’s more recent allergist checkups, they tested him for all of the tree nuts instead of just a mix.  Due to my allergies, he seldom eats them and has only tried a few varieties.  He came back with a smaller (but still present) reaction to Brazil nuts.  We have not challenged that one, but I don’t think he’ll encounter them very often.  After all, I’m allergic to tree nuts and when I saw that test result, I said “What the heck is a Brazil nut?”  Clearly, I haven’t encountered them often either.  (Although the Rio 2 movie brought them into better focus for both of us.)

So Zax has been learning how to navigate the world with food allergies.  He knows to ask--an ADULT!--whether it has “egg or peanut or nut” any time he’s offered food.  He knows that he isn’t supposed to have any if the answer is “I don’t know” or “I don’t think so.” He knows the rule “Never touch food on somebody else’s plate, and never put your food on somebody else’s plate.” He knows that he’s supposed to tell an adult if he feels himself having a reaction.  We go over these safety routines on a frequent but irregular basis, to provide repetition and make sure they’re still fresh.

Zax is turning into a pretty good self-advocate.  One day in kindergarten he hadn’t finished his lunch, and said it was because he needed to wash his hands so he ran out of time.  Then he reported that he had to wash his hands because he accidentally touched his friend’s “egg pie.”  I have no idea what the little girl was eating, but I was very proud of him--and told him so--for taking care of himself.

And that’s my highest hope for my allergic child--that he will learn to expertly take care of himself.

Zax's Story ...part 1

Zax came into our lives in October of 2008.  He was a wonderful baby and, apart from a bit of eczema, was pretty healthy.  Because of my own allergies (and particularly having heard the story of my own first experience with egg) we were very cautious about introducing new foods to him.  We introduced one food at a time, spaced four days to a week apart, and watched carefully for any signs of allergy.

Things went fine until he was about 10 1/2 months old.  I purposefully scheduled Zax’s first taste of scrambled eggs on a weekend when my husband would be home to keep me company.  I also introduced the egg well before his first birthday, because there was no way his first exposure was going to be in his birthday cake.  I wanted to know beforehand.

It's very hard to get a picture of red, blotchy skin

After a handful of bites, we began to notice that something was wrong.  Zax was fussy, more so than with previous foods he simply hadn’t cared for, and was rubbing at his face.  We stopped giving him the egg and cleaned him up, including changing his clothes.  He was starting to get a bit red at that point, but strangely that ended at the neckline of his shirt, like he was only getting red where he’d gotten the egg on his skin.  We monitored him and he gradually improved, eventually taking a nap and having everything cleared up at that point.

We called the pediatrician, who immediately referred us to the Colorado Allergy and Asthma Center.  We set up an appointment and took him in.

It later occurred to me how ironic the situation was.  I have food allergies, and to be honest I almost expected a reaction from him, yet I didn’t have the slightest idea of what to give him.  I’d never browsed the pharmacy for children’s allergy medication, and I’m grateful that his initial reaction wasn’t worse.  If he’d gone into anaphylactic shock, I probably would have given him my own epi pen before racing off to the hospital, but fortunately that didn’t happen.

The allergist performed a skin test for the eight most common allergens.  Zax bore it well, and didn’t fuss much.  His results came back positive for egg, which we expected, and also for peanut, which we did not.  The kid had never eaten peanut so it seemed strange that he could already be allergic to it.  When I considered my own history of false positives on skin tests, I knew that at some point I would want to challenge the peanut diagnosis, but that would have to wait.  Several years, in fact, until he was old enough to speak and mature enough to describe how he felt.  For the time being, we would consider him allergic to both egg and peanut.

Even though I’d known he was allergic since the day he ate scrambled egg, I still felt disappointed by the diagnosis.  In fact, my first thought when they read the results was “Really?  He didn’t get the memo that he was supposed to take after his daddy?”  It was short-lived though, as I was already rearranging things in my head, thinking of how to incorporate these new foods into my existing food-avoidance routines.

The staff at CAAC seemed surprised by my attitude.  Did I have questions?  Not really.  This is my normal, just with new foods.  I knew that they would be appropriately labeled thanks to the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act.  I wasn’t even that concerned about finding substitutions for egg.  I figured the internet would tell me everything I needed to know.

They brought in an EpiPen and tester and started to show me how to use it.  I pulled out my own and said “You mean like this?”  I declined to schedule a follow-up appointment a few weeks later, as they admitted it was just to address questions people encountered as they adjusted to an allergic lifestyle.  I did, however, schedule a special appointment for them to test for and administer his flu shot, since the vaccine is incubated in chicken eggs.

Life went on from that point without too much fuss.  Zax was still a baby, so we didn’t typically order him restaurant food anyway.  Baking without egg proved to yield rather flat results (literally), but things still tasted fine.

We had a few incidents.  At 20 months, a second cousin gave him a cookie which made him cough before anyone discovered he had it.  At age 2 he stole a piece of pasta that had an egg-laden alfredo sauce, and that time, nothing happened.  We hoped that meant he was outgrowing the allergy, but his next annual exam showed that his numbers had not diminished in the slightest.

At age 3, a few months after Kal’s birth, we were at JC Penny taking some family pictures.  I had brought along some plain m&ms to ensure Zax’s cooperation and smiles in the photos.  While many peanut allergic folks avoid plain m&ms due to their troubling “may contain peanuts” warning, we had had no problems with them.  (My relationship with “may contain” products is complicated, and probably the subject of another post.)  It was good we had them that day, because we needed a few bribes incentives to get Zax through the pictures.

After the photo shoot, my husband and I were looking at the results while Zax watched the movie in the waiting area.  After a while, he came running up to me asking if he could have some m&ms.  Knowing that waiting was boring for a 3-year-old, and that we still had a while to go, I said “yes” and reached into my bag for the m&ms.  To my surprise, instead of eagerly awaiting my offering, Zax ran off.  He went up to a strange woman in the waiting area and held out his hands, and I watched almost in slow-motion as a very fat m&m disappeared into his mouth.

I charged across the room calling “Get that out of your mouth!  What kind of m&m is that?”  Zax obliged, looking rather shocked at my behavior.  The woman looked sheepish as she told me it was a peanut m&m, and, “I did tell him to ask!”

I pretty much ignored her after that, because I was focused on Zax.  The m&m he’d given me was still intact, but since those things break in the bag all the time, I figured the candy coating ought to have peanut residue aplenty.  How did he feel?  Was he doing okay?  I didn’t want to scare him, and also didn’t want to guide him towards giving me certain answers, so I started asking all sorts of silly questions alternating with important ones.  How did his nose feel?  How did his mouth feel?  How did his toes feel?  His throat?  His belly button?  His eyes?  His tongue?  His knees?  His chest?  He was giggling by this point, and reporting that everything felt fine.

You have to remember that at this point, the peanut allergy was unconfirmed.  He had positive test results but had never eaten any.  So while I continued to keep a close eye on him for the rest of the day, and asking him how he felt at random intervals, part of me was hoping that maybe the peanut was a false positive after all.

Check back Friday for the rest of Zax's story!

My Story ...part 3

Click here for part 1 of my allergic history, birth to age 4.
Click here for part 2 of my allergic history, up to age 6.


So by age 6, I'd actually been tested for allergies, and my allergies and asthma were coming under better control.

Time went on, and we muddled through.  At some point, the responsibility of carrying of my inhaler and EpiPen (which I now had) was passed on to me.  I remember wearing a fanny pack daily in 5^th grade, so that might have been when we transitioned.  I definitely remember keeping the EpiPen in my backpack by high school, and I particularly remember the flimsy plastic case it used to come in being crushed by the weight of all my books.  I wondered whether it was sterile enough for use if it was unprotected in my bag, picking up all the lint and grit that backpacks gather.

The use of my daily asthma meds was relegated to me as well.  I was diligent, until sometime during my teens, when my mother asked if I was still using my inhalers.  “Sometimes” was my answer.  She rebuked me for that, telling me that they have a cumulative effect and using them once in a while wouldn’t do me any good.  If I wasn’t having problems despite not using the medications properly, then maybe we ought to stop using them altogether.  My asthma did seem to have entered a “honeymoon period,” and so we stopped the daily medication.

In fact, I stopped seeing an allergist altogether for a while (and I’d never been tested yearly like my kids are.)  I continued to get EpiPen, albuterol, and daily antihistamine prescriptions from my primary doctor, but I had food avoidance routines down by that point, my asthma only bothered me when I was sick or sometimes exercising, and I never had any questions.  I saw no need for a specialist.

I continued to have the occasional slip-up in the food allergy department into adulthood.  It took a couple emergency trips to the drug store to buy Benadryl before I finally remembered to always keep some with me.  But still, by the time I was on my own I felt confident in my ability to navigate the grocery store, restaurants, parties, and life in general.

One thing I figured out, probably in my teen years (and something that will certainly make some people shudder), was that I could do a “taste test” for foods I was uncertain of.  If there was a food I wanted to eat, but I couldn’t find a label or the person who made it, I would break off the tiniest crumb of the food and place it on the tip of my tongue.  Then I would wait.  If I felt nothing, I would repeat the process with a slightly larger crumb, and again a few times until I’d eaten a whole bite safely.  If I made it that far, I would eat the food, confident that it did not contain any nuts.  No foods that passed this taste test ever gave me trouble in larger doses.

If, on the other hand, I started to feel the telltale tingly itch of an allergic reaction, I would spit out the crumb, rinse out my mouth, wash my hands, and move on.  Generally if this happened, it happened on the first crumb.  And generally, that was as far as it would go.  Although there was once, while I was babysitting, no less, that a taste-test reaction got a little more severe.  The cookie probably had walnuts in it, which has always been my worst nemesis.  But was that enough to stop a teenager from repeating the process?  Of course not.  (Warning to parents:  Allergic teenagers are scary.  The time between taking responsibility for their own care and full maturity can be fraught with bad decisions.  I’d never thought of it that way until recently, but when analyzing my own behavior, I had to admit that some of it was reckless.  In fact, I’d forgotten about the babysitting incident until I sat down to write this post.)

As I did become an adult, there wasn’t much to report.  Every now and then something would slip under my radar, but the incidents were few and far between.  I took charge of buying my own food, but knew how to read labels and fortunately, tree nuts aren’t as common as some other allergens.  In 2002 I introduced a new family to the complexities of food allergies when I met my husband.  As we got engaged and then married, he and his family got to learn more and more about my corner of the world.

I’ve never asked my husband to completely remove nuts from his diet or our house.  What I do expect is that he thoroughly clean up after himself.  And to know when he can and can’t kiss me.  I had to educate him on what all that meant at the beginning, and I give the occasional reminder even now.  Even though he knows what I’m reminding him of, he manages not to sound impatient when he responds to my reminders.  He knows that this makes me nervous.

Having children was an adventure, as it is for everyone, but especially in the food allergy department.  I’ll give my children their own introductions, but I will say that having kids made me reevaluate how I handle my own allergies.  I’d become lax in some areas, but I can’t teach my kids proper safety if I don’t model responsible behavior.  I can’t check their restaurant choices for allergens while assuming a food is free of mine, even when it has been in the past.  After all, you never know when someone is going to do something wacky, like put walnuts in an egg roll.  And I have a responsibility to be there for my kids.

I started seeing an allergist again myself.  I had new questions I’d never before considered, like whether it’s safe to breastfeed after an allergic reaction.  I wasn’t wondering about the drugs so much as whether I might pass anti-walnut antibodies on to my children, thereby giving them my same allergies.  It was a whole new world--a time that causes many people to reevaluate their priorities--and it galvanized me to be safer and to help make the world safer for my children.