When I think back, I knew that something wasn’t quite right, but I tried to ignore it as ‘just eczema’. Lots of people got that, I reasoned. And when specialists – after weeks of testing at Starship – confirmed she was anaphylactic to milk and dairy products, dustmites, egg and animal dander, I actually welcomed the diagnosis. At least there was now a reason for her fretfulness and unsettled behaviour…the strange itchy rashes that would appear on her face, hands and body for no reason, her asthma, the enormous hives across her body. I actually felt happy as I left the hospital. It wasn’t until later that I realised I’d been slowly affecting her through eating allergens that passed into her in-utero and through breast milk. I was the reason she was suffering…in doing the most natural thing a mother can do for a child, I was making her sick. From that time on, things went from bad to worse. At 13 months, she picked up a peanut butter sandwich and smeared it on her hands, which then progressed to her eyes, and her whole face and tongue swelled up so she couldn’t see or use her nose. At 18 months, she poured a quarter-cup of cow’s milk down the front of her pyjamas and came up in angry broken urticaria on her stomach so bad that she had medication administered in hospital. At three, her eyes swelled shut after an egg in the back of our stationwagon on a trip to Taupo cracked in its carton as she sat in front of it in her carseat. She walked past a rubbish bag on Christmas Day as a pre-schooler, somehow got eggshell on her hand and her face swelled up so much you couldn’t see her eyes, nose and lips anymore. On my way, ironically, to a food allergy support group meeting, she reacted to the licked-clean top of a yoghurt pottle inadvertently left in her carseat by one of her brothers. By the time I got to the meeting, her skin was burnt and angry all over her torso, she coughed like a barking seal, was breathing wheezily and vomiting. When she got to school age, I was scared to let her out of my sight. One of the five-year-old children in her class (after I had been to talk to them about my daughter’s allergies) tried to force a peanut butter sandwich down her throat to “see her die.” At a twilight sports event THE SYMPTOMS… • Swelling of mouth/throat/ face/lips/eyes • Difficulty swallowing or speaking • Difficulty in breathing (or noisy breathing) • Alterations in heart rate • Wheeze or persistent cough • Abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting • Sense of impending doom • Sudden weakness (drop in blood pressure) • Collapse and unconsciousness • Pallor and floppiness • Hives or welts on skin. Several factors can influence the severity of anaphylaxis, including asthma, exercise, heat, alcohol and, in people with food allergies, the amount eaten, how it’s prepared and how it’s consumed. for school (including an egg-and-spoon race), she reacted to the egg white splattered around the schoolgrounds and needed an adult dose of antihistamine to calm her allergy down. One night – after a trip to the medical centre after another bad reaction – she shook so much from all the drugs in her body that my mum and I sat with her for hours in front of the fire until she could fall asleep. She was perhaps seven or eight. Another time, at the movies, I ate an icecream and then unthinkingly kissed her forehead as she asked me a question. Where my lips touched her skin, an angry bright-red lip outline was visible as a tattoo for at least two days. And one of the most memorable reactions occurred when she got chocolate sauce from a biscuit dip on her face. I found her sobbing, rubbing her face desperately on the cool tile bathroom floor, her eyes bloodshot and her cheeks grazed and broken as if she’d fallen headfirst from a skateboard onto asphalt. All of this, obviously, meant we had to be scrupulously careful of what she ate, and where. At a McDonald’s restaurant in Mt Maunganui, the invisible dried icecream left from some other child on the restaurant highchair brought the backs of her legs up in angry weals so sore that she cried for ages. I could never place her directly into the supermarket trollies without washing them thoroughly with wipes first (you can imagine the looks I got). I had to read every single label and understand every type of ingredient and additive – which in those days wasn’t as easy as it is today. We fed her rice milk and anything else she liked. I laughed when she solemnly told a friend’s mother that she was allergic to vegetables. Concurrently, she also developed boils through her thin eczema-prone skin. On one memorable day, she had 17 around her body. I angrily pulled her out of ballet at five when the teacher complained that she wasn’t wearing tights with her leotard. When I explained that the sores were too painful to wear anything but bandages, she loudly proclaimed that the other mothers were annoyed she wasn’t wearing any. On that day, a sunny Tuesday afternoon, just one other mother and daughter walked out with me in protest. Her face would crumple when she couldn’t eat birthday cakes, or if she had to take a ‘special pack’ of food to a party. She looked longingly at pavlovas and chocolate in the supermarket, and Grandma would search the country for milk and nut-free Easter eggs to give her so she didn’t miss out. We’d find something she could have, and it would inexplicably be impossible to find the following year and she’d go without again. At high school, she had a special medical box in the sick room with adrenalin and antihistamine in it. On days like senior students’ last days, she couldn’t go to school because kids would throw eggs on the teachers’ cars and it would be everywhere. Her last major reaction occurred two years ago, when she drank a sip of a friend’s thickshake at a Sunday night market that inexplicably contained peanut butter. I got a hysterical call from her saying she was vomiting, couldn’t catch her breath and her lips were swelling up. Another trip to the emergency room… this time with three concerned friends in tow who learned so much from it all, albeit the hard way. I’m pleased to say that these days, things are easier. At 18-and-a-half, she I found her sobbing, rubbing her face desperately on the cool tile bathroom floor, her eyes bloodshot and her cheeks grazed and broken as if she’d fallen head-first from a skateboard onto asphalt. www.foodtechnology.co.nz 13
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