Brooke's first encounter with peanut butter

Brooke was 18 months old when, at our whits end, we decided to try the fattening peanut butter her pediatrician kept pushing us to try. I put a dab of it on the end of a spoon and mixed it with a tiny bit of honey.  I remember having to coax Brooke to sit down and try it.  The instant that I finally got her to open up and take a taste, was the moment that our lives would be forever changed.

Brooke let me put the spoon in her mouth.  She trusted me.  I should have listened to my instincts, but I didn't.  I listened to the medical doctor and her insistent pushing over and over and over again, telling me to feed my egg allergic, eczema suffering, sensitive to ketchup and ranch child, peanut butter.   But even if we would have waited, the results would have been the same... sooner or later we would have found out that Brooke was indeed deathly allergic to peanuts.  I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have thought that if she was allergic to peanuts, that she would just get a rash like she did with the scrambled eggs I had fed her only months earlier.  However, the reactions were so very, very different. 

As soon as I put that spoon in her mouth, she was batting at her mouth and crying to get it out.  I knew at that point, something was very wrong.  I opened her mouth to try to get the peanut butter out for her, but it was too late.  She had already swallowed it.  Almost instantly, she began to get large red hives all around her mouth.  Within one minute her beautiful little lips were swollen to more than twice their normal size.  I rushed Scott to get the benedryl, and with shaking hands I administered a dose.  That dose of benedryl probably saved her life life that night.  I knew well enough, that we needed to get Brooke to the ER immediately.  We put her in the car, and drove as fast as we could to the ER which was about 10 minutes away.  The entire car ride there I kept asking Brooke to stick her tongue out so I could see it.  I knew from my medical emergencies courses in college, what anaphylaxis was, and what they symptoms were.  I knew that if her tongue were to swell, that it could swell enough to close off her airway and she could die.  That is why I was horrified to see, that when she stuck her tongue out, the tip of it was rapidly swelling.

It may sound crazy, but I am so thankful that Brooke had that allergic reaction to eggs when she was 12 months old.  If she had not had that reaction, we wouldn't have had the benedryl that night and Brooke's story could have turned out very differently.  Luckily though, the benedryl kicked in before the base of her tongue could swell, and she survived her first anaphylactic reaction.  We arrived at the ER and told them why we were there.  We said that we were pretty sure the benedryl was working and that we just wanted to wait in the waiting room for awhile.  We waited for about an hour and then went back home.

Knowing what I know now, Brooke should have been admitted that night.  What I now know, that I didn't know back then, is that anaphylactic reactions can come back up to 6 hours after the first symptoms.  I thank God for keeping my daughter safe and alive that night, because after we left the ER, we came home and went to bed.

I remember taking Brooke to see a pediatric allergist at some point.  I can't really remember whether it was before or after the peanut butter exposure, but I do remember that our experience at the allergists office wasn't any better than at the peds office. We went for Brooke's appointment, and when the doc came in he asked "what would you like me to do?" Still being VERY new to allergies, I had no idea what he was asking of me. I thought for sure that he, being the doctor, would come in and tell me what needed to be done. When I admitted that I wasn't sure what he was asking, he told me to come back when I knew what I wanted, and we were dismissed.

We found a new allergist.  The next allergist was much more informative.  It was from him that I learned that children with eczema were more prone to develop food allergies, and it was from him that I learned that if a child has an allergic reaction to one of the top 8 allergens (eggs) then they should avoid the others until after they are tested.  It was from him that I learned how to properly use an epi pen and advised to keep it with us everywhere we went.  It is from him that I should have learned to look for a new pediatrician.  Around that same time frame, I learned that one of my friends had gone through a similar experience and had recently found out that her son was deathly allergic to peanuts as well.  She also had a friend who had a son with peanut and milk allergies.  Our food allergy world was starting to grow.  This friend of my friend was interested in starting a support group for moms of children with food allergies, and I was none the more eager to join up with them.

The group, Food Allergy Moms, was such a blessing.  I learned so much from these other mothers who were going through the same things I was going through.  I was shocked to learn how common food allergies in children really were.  There were women in the group who had children allergic to eggs, nuts, peanuts, milk, garlic, sunflower, wheat, you name it.  The need for such a group was soon realized as it quickly grew, and soon we were all sharing tips and recipes and offering support for ourselves as well as our children.

Although I still had so much more to learn, I had arrived at a good place.  My child had friends who were like her and I had made friends whom I could learn from.  I was going to need it.