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.