Talking Allergies

Hi everyone! My name is Julie, and I am a mother to a 6 year old very healthy daughter, and a 3 year old son with multiple food allergies. My husband and I do not have any food allergies, so living with this has been a real eye-opening and scary experience for us. My son has tested positive (skin testing conducted by an allergist) to the following foods Note: his allergist has indicated that my son is a "highly allergic" child
Here's the list:
peanut/sesame seed/tree nuts/egg/green peas/sunflower seeds/salmon/halibut/pineapple

In addition, we have been told to avoid all fish, shellfish, all beans, all legumes.

My son's first reaction was to green peas at 6 months, but I honestly didn't know at the time that an allergy to green peas was a possiblity (I later learned that it can be an indicator of a peanut allergy). At 9 months he had a severe allergic reaction to egg yolk and was rushed to emergency - that was EXTREMELY scary! Just prior to 12 months, he also reacted to sesame seed, sunflower seed and salmon. A visit with an allergist was expedited, and he was seen at 12 months of age and skin tested for the above, for which he was positive to all suspected. We've had a couple of other really big scares involving hospital visits and an ambulance call, but the last 18 months has not required any hospital visits. It's now been 2 years since our first visit to the allergist, and we've learned to live with it and still have a great life, but I'm looking to hearing others stories and for ideas from other families.

I'm so glad this forum exists!!!!!

Thanks for the information and reference Susan. I will look for it.

I'm a 28 year old single mother and my 3 year old daughter was just diagnosed with a cashew allergy, after an anaphylactic reaction last weekend. Last year she had a similar, though more severe, reaction to an unknown substance/food. She is the only person on my side or her father's side with a food allergy. She was born 2.5 months early, so I'm wondering if that had anything to do with it. Her allergist refused to test for anything other than cashews (since we knew she ate something with cashews in it), so I'm currently looking for a new one!

Hi, I am Ali and I am anaphylatic to fish, allergic to most fresh fruit, carrots, walnuts and hazelnuts. I am also have seasonal allergies. My 2.5 yr old son was recently diagnosed as anaphylatic to peanuts and is avoiding treenuts and fish. We have been lucky so far and have managed to avoid serious reactions.

I am so looking forwarding to the first issure of Allergic Living

Ali

Ali,

I have been posting for a while, but just wanted to say how similiar our alleriges are. I am allergic to nuts, fresh fruits, raw carrots and have seasonal allergies. I think I am also allergic to raw potatoes, as I sneeze a lot whenever I peel them. I believe my fruit allergies are oral allergy syndrome. How old were you when you developed your allergies; I was about 17-18. Coincidentally, my cousin has almost the exact same allergies as me. I am wondering if nut allergies are less severe when associated with oral allergy syndrome. I have not had a severe reaction in 20 years, even though I have been accidently exposed a couple of times. How severe are your reactions?

Soccermom

Hi Soccormom

My fish allergy has been life long. I think my fruit allergies and carrot, developed sometime in my teens, it is probabley oral allergy symdrome, I still have to do some reading on that topic. Fruit gives me itchy mouth, eyes(occassionaly swollen) and my throat feels like it is closing, carrots are the same. The reactions are much worse during pollen season. The only reaction to nuts is mildly itchy mouth. In the past I did try to avoid the actual nuts but ate 'may contains' and ate trail mix etc and just avoided walnuts and hazelnuts. Now that my son is allergic to peanuts I avoid all nuts all the time. And as for the seasonal allergies, it seems like I have had them forever, but they did get worse in my teens.

I am also allergic to chicken, but I can eat the white meat without to much problems.

Where can I get info on Oral allergy syndrome?

Ali

I'm Islandgirl and although I joined a few weeks ago, I've yet to introduce myself.

I'm a 36 year old mother of 2 girls. My oldest daughter has no allergies at all but my youngest has anaphylactic allergies to peanut, almond and kiwi. Her first reaction was the first time I gave her peanut butter just before her first birthday. She kept spitting it out and I kept putting the bread back into her mouth. Thank goodness she didn't eat it as her face swelled up, hives were everywhere and her face was red. Our pediatrician gave her an epi-pen prescription and great information for us to avoid all nuts as well. Formal testing at 2 confirmed the peanut allergy. We'd introduced kiwi to her at 18 months and she reacted similarly to the peanut butter. We also took a picture of the reaction to take to the allergist which helped. We had her retested last year at 7/12 years old to see if she'd outgrown her allergies and because our move from Edmonton to Vancouver Island meant she could be in contact with hazelnut and walnut trees and kiwi vines. Peanut reacted so badly to the skin test, they had to give her Benadryl. Almonds also showed up and we continue to avoid kiwi. We confirmed all of this with the blood test.

I have no food allergies but was diagnosed with asthma at 6 months and allergies with formal testing at 12 - dust, mold, cats, dogs, oil paint, etc. At 23, I became allergic to sulfa drugs; an allergy my grandfather also had. My husband has slight shellfish allergies - just a little puffiness around the eyes which is fine because he doesn't like shellfish anyway. Makes it a little hard to live and eat on Vancouver Island!

Sometimes the ramifications of her allergies scare me silly but my husband and I try to be thankful that except for that, we're lucky to have 2 healthy, beautiful children. Her allergy has also led me into a new profession which I never would have thought of in a million years so I guess there's something positive to be said about it.

HI,
My name is Sue...I live with an asthmatic who is allergic to just about everything. I have a sensitivity to odors and a wheat intolerance.
Like everyone here life poses a great challenge just to have a good quality of life.

I don't visit forum a lot because of time but always looking for a place to find some info and to exchange some thoughts.

Hope to be back soon to catch up on all the forums here.

Sue90

Hi everyone,

I am the mother of a very active 4 year old who was diagnosed with food allergies at 18 months old. He is allergic to lentils, peanuts, tree nuts, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds.

He begins JK in the fall. Has anyone had to deal with a school without a treatment protcol in place?

Hope to chat again soon.

darkver

Hello darkver. Interestingly, your son's list of food allergies (lentils/peanuts/tree nuts/sesame seed/sunflower seed) is quite similar to my son's (however, my son is also allergic to eggs, fish (specifically salmon and halibut), green peas & pineapple).

My son will enter a preschool program in the fall (the same school that our daughter attends). Although the school has a plan in place for peanut/nut allergies, the additional allergies on his list are a new challenge to the school. Sesame seed is likely going to be the most challenging to handle; however, my son's allergist has strongly urged us to request that his classmates not bring in foods containing sesame seeds. (Incidentally, our son's allergist is one of the speakers at the upcoming Allergy Expo). Our son's allergist has written a letter to the school to request that he be exempt from the food program requirement for preschool age children.

I've found the best approach at the school is to be patient and understanding, and work with them in terms of education. We arranged to have a volunteer speaker brought in from Anaphylaxis Canada to help raise awareness of anaphylaxis, and to provide a training session on the use of the epipen.

I hope your son's school will be receptive and understanding of your son's needs. Good luck!

I have a meeting with the principal on Monday. Had a phone conversation today and it was interesting to say the least. Although he sounds willing to work with me. He kept mentioning the other students at the school and how hard this situation was going to be . Should be an interesting dicussion on Monday....

I'm a 30-something girl who has had asthma and seasonal allergies since university.

Last summer, I had a nice chocolate body wrap at a spa and after developing nasty hives all over, was diagnosed with allergies to soy, tree nuts and tree fruit. I think I have had these food allergies for sometime, but I just chalked the tree fruit / oral allergy reaction to a response to pesticides. Funny how we sometimes make excuses for what our bodies are telling us.

My life has changed greatly as I used to live off of processed foods, eat at restaurants religiously and generally pop any foodstuff into my gob! Now I'm much more conscious of what is going into (or onto) my body.

This is an awesome forum and I'm so excited to see the magazine.

TMcG

Hello, this is an awsome place to be! I wish I would have stumbled on this site a while ago. I am lucky to only suffer from mostly environmental allergies, dogs, horses. However my youngest (3 1-2) is allergic to peanuts. We live in avery small town where people have had to deal with major water crisis' but peanut allergies are still few and far between. My son starts school in Sept. and we (my husband & I, the prinicpal & his JK teacher) are all working at creating as safe of environment for him!

Hi my name is Sandy. I am the mother of 2 children ages 4.5 and 2.5. My 2.5 yr old is allergic to Peanuts, Sesame, Milk and Eggs. We first became aware of potential allergies when she was about 5 months old and we were trying her on Milupa rice cereal. She didn't take well to the cereal and developed a rash on her chin and neck. I thought she was just being fussy and with that really bad eczema that she had, it was no wonder she developed the rash! Looking back on things, when she was about 3 months of age, my husband tried to give her a bottle of a milk based infant formula and she violently refused it. We thought we had the bottle too warm and burned her because she developed redness in her mouth and blisters on her lips. She was a very happy and easy going baby except for when we started solids - she seemed almost fearful and we would have to hold her closely to feed her. I never thought about allergies.

During the last trimester of my pregnancy with her, I developed pneumonia and took antibiotics, codiene and a steroid puffer. I will alway reget that because I sometimes wonder if this made her allergic. Also, I ate all of the things that she is allergic to while I was pregnant and breastfeeding (9 months) - when I stopped nursing her, her eczema went away. If I would have known that I was exposing her to all these things through breast milk I would have stopped eating those things. I have alot of guilt.

About 1 month ago, my older child developed hives that lasted about 3-4 days. Likely a food allergy...to what I have no idea. But he will be tested this June.

I have an allergy to sulfa drugs, my husband is allergic to pollens and cats. My sister is anaphylactic to tree nuts and his sister is severely allergic to shellfish. I suppose the genetic code is there, I just probably unlocked it for her.

I am very grateful for this site. We have been doing the allergy thing for about 18months now but I still have alot of fear, anxiety and guilt.

Hi Sandy, welcome to the club!