By Caroline Peacock
Q News
I love peanut butter. I will be the first to admit that one of my favorite candies is Reese’s peanut butter cups, and a favorite snack of mine is a smoothie bowl with peanut butter drizzled on top. I was the kid in pre-school that brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to school every day.
However, my love of peanut butter came to a screeching halt one day. My grandmother whom I call Oma had invited me over for an afternoon of gardening. We paused for a quick snack break. I sat on my Oma’s couch that was on her front porch. She had a wicker couch that had cushions will little apples on them. She brought out a tray of lemonade and a box of mixed nuts. I had never had mixed nuts before, but I ate peanut butter almost every day.
I munched on the nuts leaving a mess of crumbs and salt all over her couch. Within a few minutes, I started to feel hot and sick to my stomach. I was about seven-years-old and just like any seven-year-old, I had a hard time communicating exactly how I was feeling.
How do you communicate that you feel like you are dying? The feeling I had that day was the feeling of doom. When you are faced with death, you gravitate towards the person or people that you love and care about the most, you want them to protect and save you. I had that feeling of overwhelming death when I begged to go home to see my mom. However, every day I face the possibility of having that feeling again because others, who do not understand the severity of my allergy, are not careful.
As soon as I felt that feeling of doom, I ran down to my father who was installing a TV with my uncle in my Oma’s basement. I begged him to take me home. This was extremely unusual because no matter how sick I was, I didn’t care if I was at my Oma’s because I loved being there and being with her. My dad and Oma knew that something was wrong. On the way home I cried for my mom, all I wanted was to be in her arms.
As soon as I got home my mother gave me a huge hug. When she pulled me away to get a better look at me, she noticed I was covered in hives, big, red, itchy blotches on the skin. However, that was the least of my concerns because I could barely breathe.
That night was one of the scariest nights of my life. My family and I had no idea what was happening to me. I never went to the hospital, and I never had an EpiPen injection, my body did what it needed to do to fight the reaction.
Essentially, making me a miracle. Most people do not survive anaphylaxis reactions without medical help or an EpiPen injection.
A few weeks of recovery and a lot of tests and we finally found out what had happened that scary night. I had had an anaphylaxis reaction to tree nuts. A somewhat rare, but extremely severe allergic reaction.
The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America says that about one in 50 Americans have a life-threatening allergy. However, it is believed that with the rise in allergies being diagnosed that this rate is actually higher now, with about one in 20 Americans having a life-threatening allergy.
Today, I can eat peanut butter even though I stayed away from it for about seven years after my reaction. However, I am still severely allergic to tree nuts. Which are all other nuts, except for peanuts. So, what does this mean for me on a daily basis?
It means that daily I have to watch what I eat. At restaurants or even eating at school I have to request tree-nut free foods and just in case I accidentally do eat a tree nut I always have two EpiPen injections ready. An EpiPen is an injection that someone gets when they have an anaphylaxis reaction that gives them 15 minutes of relief before medical help can arrive.
Having a severe allergy where you have an anaphylaxis reaction is nothing to mess around about.
A common thing I hear is, “Oh well you just blow up like a red balloon right. That’s funny.” Yes, I do “blow up like a red balloon” but that is not as bad as barely being able to breath and no, it’s really not funny.
What people do not understand is that if I eat tree nuts, it might kill me.
Just because you can eat tree nuts does not mean that I can or that by you eating it, it will not somehow affect me.
In school people will eat nuts right next to me and then touch my pens, the desk, my water bottle and not realize that just by doing that you can put me in danger. If even just a little bit of the oils on nuts gets into my system, I will have a reaction.
At college I have struggled with my allergy. My roommates will buy almond milk, thinking it is a healthier choice for them, but what they do not realize is that it is a danger to me. One drop of that almond milk lands in my cereal or coffee, I eat it, and I will have a reaction.
Same goes with people cooking my food. At my university we have the option to put comments in our mobile order. I always put “tree nut allergy”. However, I have come across several restaurants there that do not take it seriously. They will tell me only after I have eaten my food that there is a chance that almond, or cashew milk got mixed into my food, or that my smoothie is cross contaminated with nut products. If I had a reaction, it not only would have put my life in danger, but it would have been a great liability on the university for not taking it seriously.
Sadly, carelessness of allergies is not just at my university its everywhere. I have had two different instances at two different ice cream shops where they served me ice cream with a nut mixed in. I have had a highly respectable restaurant serve me a cookie with almonds on top. I have had both family and friends serve me meals with nuts mixed in, even after I told them that I had a nut allergy. Although, I caught these situations early enough and never had reactions to these, my life should never have been threatened over someone’s carelessness.
An allergy is bigger than someone having a dietary restriction or a preference of food, it quite literally is a matter of life and death.
So, the next time someone tells you they have an allergy, take it seriously.
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