The Poor Mom Revolution

     If there’s one thing I never thought I’d be, it was a mother to a child with severe allergies. When you have a child, the only thing that you want and wish for is for them to be happy, healthy and safe. You do everything in your power to make sure that all three happen as much as possible! When something’s wrong or doesn’t feel right you figure out what’s going on and fix it. And sometimes the answer is a little more than you bargained for. 

     When my son was little, he had terrible eczema and always had these raw, dry rosey cheeks. We took him to the doctor and had every type of cream you could imagine to try and lessen that irritability and uncomfortableness that he had. We never had any answers and we were having a hard time figuring her out why it would lessen but never go away. That’s when we decided It was time to get an allergy test. 

     I still remember sitting with him at the doctor’s office when he was about 4 years old. They had pricked him with just about everything under the sun all the way up and down his arm. At this time, we were just trying to make sure he didn’t scratch as almost immediately the majority of the area started to swell. I remember just sitting there holding his hands and letting him know everything was going to be okay and it would be over soon. After waiting the full 30 minutes, they marked down everything that had a reaction and gave him an antihistamine. At the end of the appointment, when we thought this is it, we were told that blood tests are more accurate and they wanted us to get that as well as soon as possible. So we did.

     Fast forward about a week or two later, and we get a call from our doctor who had asked if I was sitting down. My face had gone from excited to nervous almost instantaneously. She proceeded to tell me that this was one of the biggest reactions she’d ever seen in her career on both the prick test and the blood test that confirmed it. She mentioned he scored high to anaphylaxis on almost every category on the test including but not limited to dogs, dust, mold, eggs, dairy, peanuts, most tree nuts, shrimp, crab and soy… now many of these items he’s had since he was born, with zero reaction such as we already followed a vegan diet but always enjoyed peanut butter sandwiches, tofu and yogurt which contain soy. What we realized even though the test came up as extremely high reactivity, it would always show up as eczema, bumps around his mouth and cheeks, but never any problems with breathing or anaphylaxis concerns. Even though we never had a serious reaction up until that point, The doctor told me that in good conscious she couldn’t approve him ingesting any of it. I never went anywhere without my Benadryl before, and now it was told I needed multiple EpiPens just in case. 

     We already follow a vegan diet, so we’re used to bringing our own things to birthday parties, events, and we’re always over the top prepared to not be able to eat anything anywhere. I pack their lunch boxes and snacks every single day and plan to do so until they can either do it themselves or graduate. Any birthday or event where I know there’s going to treats for dessert options have me bringing a little bag along with homemade ones. Any school, holiday or event comes with a box of special cookies or a gallon size Ziploc bag of any and all treats they could imagine just to make sure no one feels left out or different. It’s not easy, it’s exhausting often, but I wouldn’t stop doing it for the world. I remember my son’s face when I brought in our own version of Green eggs and Ham when he was in daycare. When both kids are at a birthday party watching everyone devour cake and I pull out cinnamon sugar Pillsbury biscuits from my bag and their eyes blow up from excitement. Or all the years we’ve gone trick or treating to come home and switch out their candy which gigantic bags of things they can eat. As parents we do the best we can with the cards were dealt! 

     Unfortunately, some of us find out about these things in a pretty terrifying way. That day for us was Saturday, April 16, 2022. We were at a birthday party in Allentown at one of those places that had trampolines, climbing tower, go karts and zip lines. The kids were having an absolute blast and we had made sure to do a little shopping at Whole Foods beforehand for some lunch options as well as their vegan cupcakes. All the kids and their parents were waiting in line for go-karts because most of them were too small to go by themselves. So the majority of us staggered on getting back to the party room for the food portion and I already know you have an idea of what comes next. 

     The moment I was walking back, one of the parents ran out to me and said Kai wasn’t feeling well and may have eaten something he shouldn’t have. After looking at her face I ran immediately into the room to see my son terrified. I asked him to point to what he ate and found out he had two slices of regular pizza. I immediately picked him up and ran to the bathroom where he started to uncontrollably vomit. He told me his throat was hurting. He couldn’t swallow fully and began to cry.  I opened up my bottle of Benadryl made him swallow a whole bunch of it, but he immediately threw it all up. After telling him that everything was going to be okay and I would make sure he was safe. I ran back to get my purse, told my daughter we had to leave and thanked everyone calmly for the party. Thankfully we were less than 10 minutes from the hospital! I just remember him being in the backseat grunting and trying to clear his throat trying to take a full breath. At this point, my daughter was really scared and was trying to do breathing exercises with him and telling me to go as fast as I could. By the time we got to the hospital I had picked him up and ran inside as I explained to the front desk in the most word vomity type of way exactly what was happening and that we needed emergency attention. As my baby boy was in there getting checked out they had given him high dose of Benadryl, shot of Epi and a breathing treatment. They told us they were going to monitor him every 10 minutes and then if all was good we would have to wait 4 hours before being released. Not too long after, his reaction got worse and they gave him a second round of Epi. 

     Now, i’ve always worked with kids whether it was babysitting, summer camp, teaching and I’ve always been the calm one in intense situations. I’m not phased by throw up, blood, crying or any of that. For some reason, when it’s your child, all that crap and knowledge goes out the window immediately. My husband is the calm one in these situations. I am the one that wants to be calm but is panicking on the inside and the outside intends to not make the situation better. Of course my phone was on 5% when I called to let my husband know we had a reaction and we were on the way to the hospital. I let him know I forgot my phone charger and had no way of communicating with him the moment my phone dies. He must  have been freaking out way more than I did because we had no contact while being in the emergency room for almost 8 hours. This day was so traumatizing for me and I know it was for my kids. 

     After we all were able to relax and calm down a bit, we talked a little bit more about the day and how everything came to be. Of course, my first and immediate question was why they had eaten pizza when they knew that we had brought food with us to the party. He told me that he had asked one of the adults at the party if the pizza was vegan and he got yes as a response. Turns out the cauliflower pizza was gluten free but still had a ton of dairy and eggs in the crust. He proceeded to tell me that he asked an adult since he’s supposed to trust them and he didn’t understand why they would lie. I let him know that not all adults understand allergies or necessarily what it means to be vegan and it wasn’t on purpose. They just weren’t paying full attention. Almost 2 years later and he’s finally feeling a bit more comfortable going out to places or being somewhere without me immediately next to him. He remembers feeling scared and I don’t blame him for never wanting to feel that way again. We have had the conversation a lot because I carry my little allergy pouch that has Benadryl, an inhaler and two epipens in case we are ever in a place that’s not in close proximity to a hospital. And that is honestly the scariest thing for me because we currently live about 45 minutes away from a hospital and I’m extremely grateful that we were where we were when all this happened.

     Parenting and motherhood is hard enough. You juggle about a million things a day struggling not to let anything drop. It can be exhausting and all consuming, but in the end it’s so worth it. You work hard to build independence and responsibility while trying to keep them safe while they’re venturing out to make their own mistakes. When these mistakes can be life-threatening, it’s a lot harder to allow them the same freedoms. I offer to host sleepovers and parties at my house, but if I’m not there I have a hard time letting him go somewhere else. I know he’s a bright kid, he always asks what’s in things and he double checks ingredients himself, but one wrong bite and it could be fatal. It changes perspectives a bit and can cause you to be overprotective. I know I’ve gotten crazy eyes for bringing the lunch box to events, and I know people think I’m crazy when I don’t allow certain play dates if I’m not there and I’m 100% okay with that. I worry enough when my kids are with people that I trust with my life and theirs, let alone someone who I have only met a few times. I have no problem saying that I have trust issues especially if it’s to keep my kids safe because my job as a parent is to make sure that they come back in the same shape or better at the end of the day. Nothing else matters!

     I feel like there’s clubs, meetings and support groups for just about everything, but I’m not quite sure if there’s one for allergy parents yet. Maybe there is and I haven’t found it, but there’s got to be a place where you can vent, share, meet up and enjoy spending time with someone who gets the stress, worry, frustrating and terrifying aspects of having kids with severe allergies. We only people around us that get it