Peanuts?

As many of you know Max cannot have peanuts.  We have known about this since he was about a year old.  I had given him a Peanut butter sandwich and he puked.   He puked every time he had anything peanut butter related for the next year.  We finally met with an allergist that told us to 1.Stop giving him peanuts and 2. He is also allergic to Cashews and Pistachios. He also mentioned that even though we shouldn't give him peanuts, his skin test and his blood test didn't actually show a peanut allergy.

I don't know why we don't just have normal test results but we just don't okay.

So we did fine all last year in preschool, gave the teacher an epi pen and told her NO NUTS for Max.  It worked great.  Probably too good cause they wouldn't let him to a project that had to do with coconuts.  Whatever as long as the kid doesn't puke.

So Basically we have been going about our business and doing well without nuts.  That being said I know that we don't always carry Max's epi pen.  I try too but sometimes I forget or its in another purse or something.  Well about 2 weeks ago a little girl was on a camping trip.  It was after dark and someone had made rice crisps with chocolate and peanut butter.  Someone fed the girl one of these "treats" and apparently didn't know she couldn't have peanuts.  They tried to use an epi pen on her but her heart stopped and she died, from eating a freaking peanut!

Meanwhile Max was at Vacation Bible school.  I had told the cafeteria about his nut allergy and they said they had no nut related snacks.  Cool.  So Max comes home from bible school on the same day as I read the article about the poor girl that died, with a pine cone and bird seed.  I guess they were doing that bird feeder craft where you spread peanut butter on a pine cone and then dip it in bird seed.  Thankfully somebody had remembered that Max was nut free and didn't let him do the craft with peanut butter.  Still I was freaked out like majorly.  I mean what if they hadn't remembered.

So I totally couldn't sleep that night.  I just couldn't stop thinking about that stupid bird feeder craft.  I had not even thought about a craft having peanut butter in it, never dawned on me.  So I took his little school bag and pinned a note to it about his allergy and his epi pens and finally was able to sleep.

This also reminded me that we needed to visit the allergist again.  They said oh yes it's been a while please come and we can do more testing.  CRAP!  So we went to our apt and talked to the dr. and decided that we could just do a blood test to confirm that he was still allergic to tree nuts and also to see what was going on with the peanuts.  Basically he said that if he doesn't test positive for peanut allergy with this blood test we can do something called a food trail.  A food trail is a fun thing they do where they just keep giving your kid more and more of the offending food and see if they have a reaction.  Thrilling!  I guess this can take up to 4 hours if it goes well.  Again Thrilling.

The thing is, even if he does pass the peanut test, he still will have to stay away from tree nuts.  So honestly for us it probably doesn't much matter because if you are a label reader you know that  "may contain traces of peanuts or tree nuts " is on pretty much all products that may have any sort of nut in it.  They don't distinguish which nut it has, its either a peanut or a tree nut.  

The other problem I foresee is Max being Max and knowing he can't have peanuts.  How are we going to convince him he can eat them?  I mean if your whole like someone tells you you can't have something... I have a feeling this really isn't going to change our lives either way.  But hey maybe someday they will find a cure for tree nut allergies.