allergies

wow. So I'm a member of allergymoms.com and received my newsletter containing a lot of really interesting info in it.
On area of interest that seriously made my heart skip several beats was this blog:

Peanut Allergy (over) Reactions
Filed under: Uncategorized — Gina Clowes | August 28, 2007 @ 2:19 pm (Views: 786)
I thought some of you might be interested in this bloggers view of peanut bans. For what its worth, I find the allergy parent community pretty evenly divided on bans, some supporting, others not. Some of us have other children who can and do eat peanut products. Others have children with multiple food allergies so that food bans cannot be the answer to keeping them safe.


Here’s a quote:
“I immediately contacted the school to find the name and addresses of the student(s) with the wayward genetics. They declined to give me that information citing something about privacy. But I wanted to know how many people could die if I fed my daughter peanut butter as part of her nutritious lunch. “

OMG!!! So then I strat reading the responses and they vary from

am a loving and caring mother and kindergarten teacher. There is a child entering my school with a severe allergy to peanuts. My daughter will be in this students class. My child loves peanut butter and eats it probably twice a day. To change is more than a minor inconvience.

I don’t want another child to get sick or die but someday we are going to have to draw a line when banning foods. My daughter is allergic to milk. My husband has a severe allergy to wheat and glutens. Wheat allergies are becoming more and more prevailent in the population. Will we eventually ban it too?

If I send a peanut butter sandwhich to school with my daughter, most likely she will be the one sitting by herself or singled out and she isn’t the one with the problem. This is a cold statement, but at what point is the allergy so severe that the parents say (or should say) I will keep them at home and make other arrangements, rather than inconviencing everyone else? Could schools offer tutors to go to the home?

to heartbreaking ones such as

A nut ban at school will lower and just about eliminate a schools risk of having an unfortunate death from anaphalaxis.

My 13 year old daughter died last year from her peanut allergy. The menu of the restaurant she ate at is 99.61% peanut free and guess what– the careless food preparer still cross contaminated her sandwich with trace amounts of peanut butter cookie. We miss her dearly every day.

Granted my perspective is tainted but why aren’t we doing all we can to protect our precious children? A ban is just one of the tools in the toolbox to protect our children. Education, raising awareness, emergency plans, training, etc. should also be part of every school’s plans. With education and awareness, maybe then we can eliminate careless food preparers because they understand the dangers.

The number of children with food allergies and multiple food allergies continues to rise. Change will come. I pray it is sometime soon.

So, being that I am a parent with a child that has life-threatening food allergies, I just feel like we're being pushed out to sea.

And I've MET people who don't take the allergies seriously. I've spoken to people who don't see what the big deal is. People who think that Josh and I are just hysterical parents...

They've never had to witness their small child swell up like a balloon, break out into hives, have his tongue swell up and wheezing all from barely licking something that he was allergic to!

I am thankful every day that Julius is no longer allergic to wheat and milk, but he is still severely allergic to legumes, nuts and eggs. Ingesting any of those could very well kill him.

And then to read about these people who suggest that MY child, along will all other children with severe food allergies, stay HOME and be TUTORED???? That THEIR child shouldn't have to 'punished' by not being allowed to eat foods that might KILL MY CHILD??? Holy crap, expand your child's food repertoire! There is more to life than peanut butter sandwiches!!!

I'm just completely baffled, stunned, angry, hurt, confused and pissed off about this.

crosses among other things

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/14/AR2007091402501.html

I read this article today and the guy in it sounded so much like me. I found it ironic that I had just mentioned this personal topic to Josh a few days ago.

I grew up in a very religious household. I went to CCD (continuing catholic...development? I dunno, something like that), had all my sacraments, etc. etc.... and as I got older and began to question the Church, I began having this silent struggle within myself, but continued going to church because my mom made me. And when I realized that I did not believe in so many things that the priests were saying that I was suppose to believe it, then I told myself that I could still go to church because what those "men behind the pulpit" were saying were just men. It wasn't God's words. God wasn't saying that birth control, abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex and later, stem cell research, was wrong. It was the guys running the show that was saying all those stuff.

I got married and continued going to Church. I prayed often. I was probably fairly religious. But slowly it changed. Not because my husband is Jewish. Not because a lot of my friends came from different faiths... but because I began to realize that I was tuning things out when I went to church. I was making excuses for things priests were saying that I didn't agree with... and when I became pregnant, my visits to church became less frequent. And when Julius was born, I pretty much only attended for Easter and Christmas. And that has remained.

For awhile I thought I could find a liberal catholic church. But when I googled it, all I got back was episcopalian.

My eyes were opened. So many extremists were killing people "in the name of God." People were judging others "in the name of God." People were HATING people, "in the name of God."

And that disgusted me.

So many hypocrites. So much politics. It was disgusting.

I believe in so many things that the Church says NO to. And I can no longer make excuses or tune out the things I want to tune out.

ANd I don't want to put Julius in a position where some guy in a robe who says he is preaching God's word, tell him about what he can and can't believe in and follow. I will not have some guy tell Julius that it's wrong to do this and believe in that and question this, etc. etc. NO!

So I'm at a point in my life where I'm feeling like the man in the above article from England. I feel loathing, I feel anger... I feel my blood boil when someone starts to talk about religion.

I'm not atheist. I still believe in God and somewhere in me I still believe in religion as a personal belief (and not as an organizational group that promotes judging others and living in a bubble).

I'm not envious of the people I know who are religious. I think I might be more envious of those who are not. Those who can easily shrug their shoulders when asked about God and heaven. I stare at awe at those people because they don't have to feel this burden.

So many years of having Catholicism shoved down my throat has made me jumpy and defensive.

Maybe when Julius is older, we might join an interfaith community. Who knows what the future brings? Julius knows about God. I've told him that much. He knows a bit about Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Josh has told him some about the Jewish faith. I think our son is pretty well-rounded. He's not like one of my friend's kid who can probably recite passages of the Bible.. but I would NEVER want that from my son.

One night when Julius was lying in our bed, we began talking about God and decided to 'pray.' And I made it a point not to just regurgitate a prayer. We talked. Julius talked to God. I talked to God. Josh talked to God. And it was nice.

That was nice.

That I can do.

you know what sucks?

I just typed up a very lengthy blog about music and dancing and videos and had links and... and... when I went to upload a photo of Julius playing his guitar, the whole freakin' screen closed. GONE! Poof!!!
I can't figure out when and how this happened, but for some reason, whenever a window closes (like when I'm uploading something and the upload is complete, or while in Outlook and the message sends and thus the window automatically closes), all the windows close!!
I've tried re-booting my computer and it doesn't do any good. I've looked through the settings and I just can't figure it out!!
Does anyone know what on earth I'm supposed to do to fix this?? It's seriously going to drive me insane.

pink

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/858884.html

Isn't this great? Though in my high school we never had any issues about bullying students who were homosexual (no one really cared who you prefered to sleep with... it was just amazing that you were actually fucking someone) But I know there must have been schools that did have those problems, which is just awful.

So how nice it was to read this about two high schoolers in Nova Scotia. http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/858884.html I hope more kids are like them. I would love to hear more about kids like these, or Marc Hall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Hall) .... kids making a difference in this world by teaching tolerance, understanding and most of all, acceptance.

I do remember something from my first year in high school: we got word that a new 6th grader male student, (high school and junior high were in different buildings, miles apart) came to school wearing a dress. No one was fazed by it all. I think most of my friends just shrugged. It wasn't a big deal to us, which I suppose wasn't the same within other schools.

Geesh, it's hard to type when my three year old is singing in the top of his lungs... I hope this makes sense. LOL