Saturday, June 7th 2003. The battle was on…it was dinner time! It was mom & dad versus our 18 month son Josh…who would win tonight? The game plan-- scrambled eggs. However, this time Shawn decides on a secret ingredient that might give us the edge…CHEESE! Who doesn’t like cheese?
Up to this point Josh has been a very picky eater and has refused to eat most everything we've tried to give him. His weight percentage was in the low teens and mom was getting a little nervous. He acted as if he did not like anything we feed him…and we had tried everything, two times! Time would tell if tonights trick would work.
We put a plate of the cheese-laced eggs on his highchair and we tried our best to ignore him, hoping that he would try it on his own…but no luck. So mom had to pull out the “just try one bite!" After that didn't work mom put her foot down and to force him to actually try it. After we successfully got some eggs in his mouth…Josh actually started to CHEW. Success! It had worked, not only did he try that bite but he willingly put other bites in his mouth…we had won…we were victorious! We were so proud of ourselves, patting each other on the back and thinking of other foods we can ‘trick’ him into eating.
An hour later we got Josh ready for bed and put him down in his crib. Josh has always done rather well with going to sleep when we put him in his room, so we were surprised after only 2 or 3 minutes he started to scream. Mom's first idea was that we needed to “wait it out,” but dad decided that the cry sounded different and insisted that we check on him. (Good call from a great dad!). We opened the door to see Josh screaming like crazy and standing up in his crib. Shawn walked over to pick him up and just as he did, Josh threw up all over! Dad handed me the drenched child and I took him upstairs to give him a nice warm bath, hoping the warm water would make his tummy feel better. Weird, I thought, he didn’t seem to be feeling sick earlier, not only that but he even ate most of his dinner! As I was lifting Josh out of the water I noticed a few patches of red blotches on his legs, I thought that was really strange, but didn't think too much of it as I got him re-dressed for bed.
Josh was still whimpering as I brought him back down to our room. Dad had changed and was just about done cleaning up the mess, I pointed out that Josh’s face started to look red and blotchy, just like his legs had in the tub, that was truly odd to me. I don’t remember why or how we came to the conclusion, but we decided that we should give Josh a dose of Benadryl. Within a minute he threw up again! After a second bath of warm water the rash looked much worse. We decided that Josh needed to go to the doctors.
Of course the cheap clinics were all closed so we ended up taking him over to the nearest ER. We explained the situation to the receptionist and she handed us a throw-up pail and told us to sit and wait in the lobby until we were called back. After 45 minutes we finally got to see a doctor and when we explained the situation the doctor's eyes got very wide and without explaining much he started telling his nurse to grab medicine ASAP! As the doctor and nurse was giving Joshua several different shots, he explained that Josh was going through a mild case of an anaphylactic reaction. The cause....most likely the eggs we forced him to eat for dinner! You can only imagine that comment made mom and dad feel just AWFUL! After Josh was monitored for a while making certain that the medicine was taking affect, they send us home. We got home in the wee hours of the morning, both of were just shocked that people could actually be allergic to EGGS!
As soon as the sun was up high enough in the sky, we called both of the Allergist on our insurance plan. They were both booked out for several months! We took the appointment that was the soonest...two and a half months away. We read and re-read all the paperwork the ER doctor had given us and prepared to spend two months avoiding everything that had egg in it. We were shocked and a little over whelmed to see how much stuff contained egg! Then there was stuff containing ingredients like Globulin, Albumin, Apovitellenin, Livetin, Ovalbumin, Ovomucin, and Phosvitin that were actually code names for EGG!!!
We got ourselves a quick education in food allergies. We knew the signs, the symptoms and every major food that is prone to cause a food allergies. So we were pretty shocked at what happened 8 days later....
TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow)
Food Allergy Week: Join us Saturday for the FAAN 5k at Wheeler Farm for more info click here.
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