Posts Tagged ‘peanut allergy’
Take me out to the ballgame
Monday, September 26th, 2011
We were handed – for free – four tickets to an Angels game for Friday night.
Front row. Third base side, right past the Angels dugout.
I wanted to go. I hadn’t been to a game in a couple years and I truly missed it. Maybe a date night with another couple?
Or maybe. Just maybe. We could take the family.
Anxiety ensued.
Because when you have a peanut allergic child, going to a Major League Baseball game is like putting him in the middle of a mine field. Peanuts, peanut shells, peanut dust – they’re everywhere.
And yet.
We’d be in the front row, with no one in front of us, and we’d put him in the middle.
We’d wipe down his seat.
He knows not to eat anything we don’t give him and he’s too old to put his hands in his mouth.
I researched other people’s experiences online and decided we could put him in long pants, so no peanuts could touch his skin if they were pushed down from the row behind us.
We’d pack benadryl and an epi pen.
And so, after much hand-wringing, we went. Our family, together at a game at Angels Stadium for the first time.
The seats will spoil these kids for any other game (by the way? I can’t tell you the amount of grime that was on the seats when I wiped them. I shudder). We had a great view of not only the field, but the pressbox, which I pointed out to Sawyer and told him that was where I had to watch the games.
He ate pizza. And, of course, a huge wad of cotton candy.
Some peanut shells did migrate down our way, but they weren’t an issue. He never came in contact with them. I watched him like a hawk and he was entirely unaffected. By my staring and the peanuts.
The whole thing was great. Even Xander behaved himself. It also helped that the game was fast – so fast, we stayed for the fireworks after.
The kids really enjoyed it. Which also made me happy, since baseball was such a huge part of my life at one time, and is still a sport I love. I cannot wait to go as a family again next season.
As soon as he got up the next morning, Sawyer thanked me again for taking him.
We were thrilled that Sawyer could do a “normal” activity. We have to live our life and we are so very glad we took the chance and went.
Tags: Angels Stadium, it was awesome, major league baseball game, peanut allergy, precautions
Posted in Parenting, Peanut Allergy | 36 Comments »
He’s a child, not an allergy
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
This is my eldest son, Sawyer, before we left for his first day of second grade Wednesday morning.
He’s a happy kid. He loves bey blades. And by love I mean he sleeps with his bey blades case next to him at night. He’s a great swimmer, a good soccer player and his favorite food is pasta (butter, but sometimes sauce). He gets popsicles for his baby brother and will give the last cookie to his sister.
Would you want this child to die? Because when you gripe about your kids having to go to a peanut-free school, when you roll your eyes as another parent questions what’s in the food her child is about to eat, when you think it’s all hysteria and helicopter mom-ing and that these children should be homeschooled, you’re talking about the life of MY CHILD. This little boy you see, with the brown fuzzy hair and the chocolate eyes that tilt at the corners.
Last night, while you were all sleeping, Sawyer lay next to me. He’d come in about 11 p.m. because he was coughing, and I immediately realized that cough came along with a big wheeze. The stomach ache he’d complained of before bedtime, when he asked how you knew when you were going to throw up, made sense. Especially when within an hour of him coming into my bed, three large patches of hives erupted on his belly. A breathing treatment and two doses of benadryl finally sent him back to his own bed – and to sleep – at 2 a.m. He would start school eight hours later.
He’d eaten a cookie at a bakery we’d visited many times without incident. It was not a peanut butter cookie. It was molasses, but cross-contamination happens and that cookie he’d happily eaten with his cousins, a fun outing before they headed home to Florida the next day, became poison.
I looked at his dark eyelashes that curl almost in half, as he breathed in the healing medicine of the nebulizer. I studied his arms, tan against the cream blanket, and thought my hand could easily encircle his biceps. It hit me so hard, then. How truly little he is. How incredibly vulnerable. And how even when he grows taller than me and stubble colors his now baby-smooth face, even when he is a parent himself, this will always be with him.
This awful, deadly allergy.
Where a great dinner with his cousins turned into a long, long night as his body saw an enemy and reacted.
So when your kids eat whatever they want without you having to worry or question, feel lucky. Not entitled.
If you haven’t lived it, you can’t get it, but you can look at this picture, you can meet my boy who will immediately befriend you, and you can think.
HE is not an allergy. He’s a child with an allergy.
A child.
Tags: children, cross-contamination, peanut allergy, school, second grade
Posted in Parenting | 61 Comments »
Thanks for the warning
Sunday, June 12th, 2011
I’m a parent of a severely peanut/tree nut allergic child. I read every label – twice – of anything that my son is going to eat. I appreciate good labeling of food. I do. It is, literally, a lifesaver.
But sometimes? The warnings make me smile. And I know, there are people who are not peanut allergic who are tree nut allergic, but still. Thanks, McDonald’s!
Tags: McDonald's, peanut allergy, tree nut allergy, warning labels
Posted in Parenting | 16 Comments »
P.F. Chang’s – I’m impressed
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011
The kids are off from school this week so David took a few days off, too.
We had grand plans. But the weather is being a total asshole. I’m sorry if this blunt talk offends you, but it’s so true.
It’s raining right now.
Anyway, Tuesday we decided we didn’t care how cloudy or chilly or windy it was. We were going to the Flower Fields in Carlsbad. It was overcast and in the 60s so it wasn’t entirely awful (it was 86 and sunny two days prior).
The Flower Fields back up to the Carlsbad outlet malls. Before I bought out half of Gymboree, we went to lunch at P.F. Chang’s.
What I love about P.F. Chang’s is they are VERY allergy friendly. It is the only Asian restaurant we feel safe taking Sawyer, because they take great precautions to avoid cross-contamination with nuts. Also, when I was on my elimination diet while nursing, I could also be sure I wouldn’t be getting gluten or shellfish.
Sawyer ordered the kids lo mein. I ordered a side of those awesome spicy green beans they have, and asked to make sure those were peanut-free in case Sawyer wanted to try it.
The waitress delivered our food and I asked whether the beans were peanut-free. Because I’m paranoid like that. And she pointed out something I didn’t know.
Food at P.F. Chang’s is served on plain white dishes – UNLESS they are specially prepared due to dietary restrictions. Then they look like this:
Notice their name on the plate? I want to share this info with all my gluten-free and peanut-allergic friends. P.F. Chang’s DOES care and now you’ll know by the plate whether it’s been made especially for you.
As we walked over to do some shopping, Sawyer said, “Thank you, Mommy. That was the best lunch ever. I loved it.”
Me, too.
Tags: a happy and safe kid is such a gift, Carlsbad Flower Fields, Carlsbad outlet mall, gluten-free, P.F. Chang's, peanut allergy
Posted in Parenting | 23 Comments »
I cried at Target
Thursday, January 13th, 2011
I was honored to help a dear friend out tonight, but it meant I didn’t sit down to do this post until it was almost bed time. But I realized I had the perfect thing to fit two prompts, “Scarred” and “A time you were relieved” from Mama Kat’s writers workshop. This post originally ran on my old blog on May 29th, 2009. I’ve re-jiggered it a bit. I hope you like it.
I cried at Target today, and I wasn’t even at the checkout counter shelling out another $50 for a bag full of crucial items such as Bakugans, Nemo fruit snacks and deoderant.
No, this was the good kind of cry. The kind that’s stuffed with relief and the joy of endless possibility. And all of this was from a two-word text message sent by my husband. (more…)
Tags: allergy prick test, peanut allergy, this allergy is so not fair, tree nut allergy
Posted in Parenting | 66 Comments »
