About My Kids With Allergies

I read an article on Pop Sugar the other day about living with a child with food allergies...     

I related to this mom's worry because I have lived through similar experiences.  Of my five kids, all of them suffer with allergies--three with environmental and two with food.  Based on the commercials you see on television, it might be easy to think of allergies as seasonal, annoying, miserable.  However, they are so much more.

Allergies can be life threatening.  They can alter how life is lived...  for the allergy sufferer and their family.  They can wreak havoc on how you interact with others--sometimes making it difficult to develop socially.

Three out of five...  that is how many of my children have been hospitalized because of respiratory problems.  The hospitalizations have never been cautionary.  One was from a severe asthma attack when the weather changed...  we were in the hospital for three days due to dehydration and lower than normal blood oxygen levels.  Second was from viral pneumonia and a high fever.  The third was from eating chicken at a hibachi grill.  There was no cross contamination, it was from smelling the shellfish cook on the grill.

The scariest was the third experience.  My little man woke up at his friends and said something was wrong and asked to call his dad.  Everyone met at the halfway mark and then he was rushed to the hospital.  As the desk staff did their diligence, our patient commented that they were so slow that people were gonna die.  That impending doom caught their attention and when they checked his vitals, his blood oxygen levels were in the seventies.  A swarm of medical professionals arrived and began working to improve his breathing.  He was out of the hospital by noon.  But that incident has stuck with us and friends.   If he hadn't awakened and asked for help, the results could have been much different.

My oldest daughter was a preemie.  She was discharged from the hospital on day 16.  On day 17 she had the sniffles.  On day 18, we were at the doctor's office beginning the long road of antibiotics and steroids.  She had her first breathing treatment at one.  Back and forth for years with problems but no answers.  Then one day in 2nd grade, she started coughing uncontrollably at school. We all missed that as her asthma attack.  Twenty-four hours later she was admitted to the hospital.  Luckily, the entire school was supportive and teachers, after-school staff and parent volunteers trained to recognize her symptoms and warning signs.    

My middle daughter wasn't a preemie exactly (my body quits at 37 weeks like clock work).  But she was small at birth weighing 5 pounds 5 ounces and she screamed miserably.  At twelve weeks, she was still very small and her skin was this ugly gray color.  The doctor figured out that she had acid reflux and started her on meds.  At about nine months she developed a high fever and was admitted to the hospital for a few days.  Xrays revealed pneumonia and the consensus was viral. At 12 months, she had been sick so many times that I had a tantrum at the doctor's office and told her she had no damn idea what she was talking about.  Surprised by my outburst, she offered allergy testing.  Finally answers...  She was allergic to soy (our alternate baby formula), wheat, rice, peanuts...  and as she got older strawberries, grits, shellfish and citrus.  

Over the years, we have become quite comfortable with our allergies.  We overshare our weaknesses with friends and families.  We carry around an arsenal of allergy fighting tools--diphenhydramine, epinephrine, albuterol, prednisone, cough syrup, breathing machine and whatever antibiotics were prescribed.  The one thing that made our allergies most bearable was family and friends who weren't put off by our problems.  

Take some time to learn more about allergies and asthma.  Visit the Asthma And Allergy Foundation website or find a local support group.