UFAN Blog

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED!

2009-05-08T10:45:00.000-07:00

Kelley's UFAN blog is now called "Food Allergy Feast," and it's moved to a new location. Click here to go to it now: www.foodallergyfeast.blogspot.com.

Don't worry -- you'll find the same weekly posts, the same blog author, the same archives... but now it has even more content, links, resources, and other helpful food allergy stuff!

See you there!

Kelley

Egg Replacers

2009-05-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

Come see me this Saturday (May 9, 2009, 9 am – 5 pm) at the UFAN booth at the Mother’s Day Garden Fair. It’s being held at Conservation Garden Park, 8215 South 1300 West, in West Jordan, UT. Click here for more info.

In my baking, I’m always on the lookout for great ways to replace eggs so that my son can share his baked treats with his egg- and milk-allergic best friend. This weekend, I finally tried a new egg replacer product that I’ve been hearing about on the UFAN email list for months. It’s called Ener-G Egg Replacer, it's tapioca based, and I found it at Smith’s.

On the back of the Ener-G box, there are several great recipes, including an incredibly simple and allergen-friendly recipe for sponge cake.

On Friday night, I was hosting a graduation party for a friend who just received his master’s degree at Weber State U (and he just happens to be the dad of my son’s egg- and milk-allergic best friend).

So decided to test the sponge cake recipe and turn it into a jelly roll. It worked great! I followed the recipe on the box, then baked it in a 10” x 15” pan. Then I spread the cake with strawberry jelly and rolled it up. Then I frosted the cake with white icing, draped a Fruit-by-the-Foot fruit snack over it like a ribbon, and voila – a diploma cake!

I haven’t tried the Ener-G Egg Replacer in anything else yet, but the cake worked out nicely, so I’m definitely going to use it in my other recipes to see how it works. They have a website with recipes and more products here.

Here are my other tried-and-true egg replacers:

For each egg called for in the recipe, substitute:

1 tsp baking powder, 1 T water or apple juice, and 1 T white vinegar – This foams up rapidly (like a science fair volcano), so it’s fun to do with kids and it works great in baked recipes like breads and cakes. This actually works better than the applesauce or banana options, because the foaming action makes breads rise a little better, I think. It’s also cheap and easy, using ingredients you already have on hand. (No dashing to the store!)

3 T apple sauce – This works well in cookies.

1/2 mashed banana – This works well in cookies (if you want the banana taste). A friend just told me she used mashed banana instead of eggs in pancakes she made using Bisquick’s mix, and she loved it.

1 T ground flax seed mixed with 3 T warm water – Actually, I’ve never tried this, because people with nut allergies have a higher chance of also being allergic to flax. But I know others on the UFAN mailing list have used ground flax seed with great results, so if you know you’re not allergic to flax, go ahead and give it a try.

Nice Girls Do Ask for Snacks

2009-04-27T09:32:00.000-07:00

Baseball practice started this week. Of course, it was cold, windy, and still damp from rain. Hardly baseball weather, if you ask me. But sports wait for no fair-weather moms, so there I was at the local ball field, shivering and hunched against the cold, while my son flexed his catcher’s mitt and chased after wildly thrown balls.

As part of the new season, the coach handed out a schedule, which included practice times, game times, and … treats.

I hate treats.

It’s hard to ask other parents to consider food allergies when they’re providing the treats. It’s still a little embarrassing, even after all these years, to have to speak up and ask that they limit their treat options. All our lives, we’ve been taught to be gracious about food that other people offer. “It’s not polite to ask for food, wait until they offer,” we were told. “Take whatever is offered, don’t turn up your nose at something they’re generous enough to provide,” we were scolded. So trying to tell someone else what they can and can’t bring for game treats goes against all our “good girl” training.

But as the mom of an allergic kid, I have to ignore the “nice girls don’t make a fuss” rule and make a fuss. (Although I try to make it a very nice fuss, of course.)

So as usual, as parents and kids huddled around the coach, when he mentioned treats, I spoke up. “Coach, I know we have at least a couple of kids on the team who have food allergies. If you’d like, I could send out an email to everyone with some suggestions for treats that would let those boys feel included.”

I braced myself for possible cold shoulders, puzzled looks, or exasperated sighs. But that’s not what I got. I got complete support – “Oh, what are they allergic to?” “What are some specific things they can have?” “Is there something you’d suggest?”

The parents were awesome. They pulled out pens and jotted notes on their schedules. They smiled and said, “Sure.” They weren’t exasperated at all. And they made jokes like, “Shoot, I was going to bring sushi for treats!” and we all laughed, instantly bonding.

We’ve come a long way in just a few years. When my son and his friend first started playing organized sports, people were still unfamiliar with food allergies, and it was harder to ask other parents to include our boys in their snack choices. But over the last five years, awareness has grown so much that we’re surprised each time we ask and we’re greeted with a positive reaction of support.

So despite the 40-degree weather, bone-chilling wind, and snowy rain, I think I’m ready for the season to start after all.

Play ball!

A Well-Written Article

2009-04-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

One of the best articles I’ve seen lately about food allergies was in the Salt Lake Tribune last Wednesday. And no, I don’t think it’s a great article just because Michelle Fogg (UFAN founder) and I are both quoted in it. (In fact, that usually makes me nervous – I’m much more comfortable doing the interviewing than being the interviewee!) No, it’s a great article because it’s very comprehensive, easy to understand, and (get this) useful.

The writer, Sean Means, set out to tell parents of children newly diagnosed with food allergies the most helpful information they need to know right away. And I think he did a great job. If you haven’t read it yet, click here.

One of the most valuable things this article accomplishes is reassuring parents that feeling overwhelmed and frustrated is normal and reasonable – and experienced by every other parent of food-allergic children (and food allergic adults themselves). Then the article goes on to explain that before too long, you learn to live with food allergies, and those “why me?” emotions fade, eventually being replaced by competence, confidence, and a positive attitude. How amazing is that?

Just knowing there really is “life after diagnosis” can help you get through those first couple of months. I sincerely thank Sean Means for showing more Utah parents that light at the end of the tunnel last week.

Hidden Ingredients in Lotions

2009-04-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

While we were in Mexico, my son and husband began calling me “Picasso.”

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it was my natural artistic talents that earned me this nickname. My penchant for patterns. My love of colors.

You’re right. It was all of those.

Unfortunately, the canvas for my artistic endeavors was my family’s winter-white skin, and my paint was sunblock.

Every day, I would dutifully apply sunblock to myself, my son, and my husband. And every day I would miss a spot or two, which would reveal itself later that evening as another bright red patch in a place it didn’t belong. By the end of the week, we all looked like patchwork dolls pieced together from a dozen different red fabrics.

Artistic, perhaps. Smart, no. Attractive, even less so.

The resort where we stayed was quite nice, and it graciously provided a decent-sized bottle of “Gilchrist & Soames Chamomile Aloe Vera” lotion in each bathroom. As usual, there was no ingredients label on the bottle. There never is, on hotel-sized toiletries. So I don’t use those lotions on my son – I always bring my own small bottles of safe lotions and shampoos, because I never know when a manufacturer is going to use a nut oil in a cosmetic product.

I did use the lotion on my own sunburned legs, and it really felt wonderful – the aloe vera in it did the trick. I was tempted to use it on my son, because he got a bad sunburn on his cheeks, but instead I washed my hands and used my own lotion on him.

Turns out, that was the right decision.

When I got home from our vacation, I logged on to the manufacturer’s website, found a phone number, and called and talked to a very friendly and helpful woman. She didn’t have the ingredients list, but promised to track it down and email it to me.

The next day, the email arrived. Sure enough, the lotion contained sweet almond oil. Choosing NOT to use the lotion was definitely the right way to go. The lotion also contained sunflower oil and soybean oil.

I wrote back to the woman and explained that I was glad I didn’t apply the lotion to my son, because having an allergic reaction in a foreign country would be scary. I also let her know that soybean oil and almond oil represent two of the top eight food allergens that cause 90% of the reactions, and I politely asked if I could make a suggestion to include at least a small warning on their bottles about nut and soy allergies. I explained that since these lotions are found in hotels around the world, the people most likely to use them are always far from home and familiar medical help. It could be a problem.

The lovely woman promptly wrote right back and said she’d forwarded my email to her supervisor, explaining to him how serious nut allergies are for so many people, and she thanked me for taking the time to let her know.

She could have blown me off. That’s the typical response from customer service people these days. But she didn’t – she took the time to let me know she thought my idea and concern were valid.

I doubt we’ll suddenly start seeing ingredients labels on hotel bath amenities any time soon because of one little email on my part. But if we all start sending simple email requests to manufacturers whenever we encounter something like this, it might make a difference someday. I hate to think that somewhere in Mexico right now, a mom is putting lotion on her allergic child to soothe a stinging sunburn, and that simple remedy is going to make a good vacation day turn bad, when a simple label could have prevented that.

So use caution when you’re staying at a hotel, and avoid using those unlabeled toiletries. And apply sunblock twice as often as you think you need to. Unless you want to take over my role as “Picasso.”

Avoiding “Cacahuates” in Mexico

2009-04-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

“Remember,” my dad explained to my son last week while we were all together on vacation in Mexico, “don’t eat anything that starts with ‘caca’.”

Good words to live by.

“Cacahuates” is the Spanish word for peanuts. “Nueces” means nuts. We practiced them a lot on our vacation, making sure we didn’t accidentally order or buy anything that contained them. We were having too much fun playing in the waves, lounging on the beach, and splashing in the pool – we sure didn’t want to cut any of that short by having to practice the Spanish word for hospital (which is, fortunately, “hospital”).

We did have one close call, however. At our resort, we ate dinner one night at the buffet. When we walked in, I told the hostess that my son was allergic to peanuts and nuts, using both the English and Spanish translations. She completely understood, and turned to tell another waiter beside her the same thing. I could pick out enough of her words to know what she was saying. They both nodded emphatically and explained to me, in English, that they understood, and that he would find many foods to choose from.

So far, so good.

When our real waiter arrived, I again explained to him that my son was allergic to “cacahuates y nueces,” tackling it in both Spanish and English, and he assured me, in very nice English, that he understood and he would talk to the chef.

Again, so far, so good.

At this buffet, you order a main entrée, then go to the buffet for salads, fruit, various Mexican specialties like fajitas and empanadas, and desserts. My son ordered the steak entrée, then we strolled the buffet looking for safe things for him to eat. The breads were out – no way to verify the baking ingredients. But the chicken fajitas were okay, the cheese empanada was tasty, and the watermelon was right up his alley. We avoided the dessert table completely – pecans and almonds were evident.

When his entrée arrived, there was the steak, a mini quesadilla, and a tiny rolled thing under sauce. “What is that?” I asked the waiter who delivered the food, who was not the same waiter we’d ordered from.

“Enchilada,” he said.

“What is the sauce on it?” I asked, eyeing it. It looked suspiciously like a mole sauce, which is often made with peanuts, almonds, or other nuts.

“No, no,” he assured me. “Nothing like that.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, “because he’s ‘alérgico’.”

He assured me again that it was nut-free. A little part of me still worried, but I’d told four different people now, all of whom assured me that they understood.

My son started in on the steak. Fortunately, he doesn’t care for sauces on much of anything, so he started on the side of the plate away from the mysterious sauce.

He was on his third or fourth bite when our original, main waiter suddenly appeared at my son’s side, and began whisking away the plate. “I need to take this away,” he said, breathless from having run across the whole restaurant.

“Stop eating!” I commanded my son, and he dropped his silverware and sat back, while the waiter scooped up the plate.

“I am so sorry,” the waiter was saying. “It was a mistake. It should not have happened. I will bring him a new plate with new food.” Within a minute or two, he was back with a new plate, new steak, and no sign of mole sauce.

The waiter was clearly embarrassed and upset, because he wouldn’t look me in the eye when he came back to refill our glasses with water. Finally, I called him over to me.

“Thank you for catching that. His allergies are scary, so I appreciate that you discovered the mistake and told us right away.” He still was embarrassed and contrite, but I could see the relief in his shoulders.

I’m a big fan of the “encourage good behavior with rewards” school of thought. I could have made a scene, chewed him out, or been angry. But that wouldn’t have helped anything. The close call and his embarrassment alone left a huge impression on him, and I know the next time an allergic person sits at his table, he’ll be extra vigilant about their food. I hope that by telling him how much I appreciated him being honest and fast in fixing the mistake, I left him with a good feeling about allergic people, and not a dread. Fear causes mistakes. I want him to care, not fear.

Also, I had made a mistake, too. I had a bad feeling about that sauce, and I didn’t act on my motherly instincts.

Next time, I’ll know better, too.

Fortunately, the whole story had a happy ending. My son loved the steak, I loved my mahi-mahi steamed in a banana leaf, and when we left the restaurant, the waiter purposefully caught my eye and said “thank you.”

And for the rest of the week, my son successfully avoided eating anything that started with “caca.”

I’ll Keep My Own Bag of Troubles, Thanks

2009-03-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

I'm off to the sunny beaches of Mexico tomorrow morning, and I'm still doing all those little last-minute things -- like packing -- that I can never quite seem to get done before midnight. Since I'll be out of touch on Monday, when I usually post, I'm posting a little early, and it's a "back by popular demand" column from 2007 (okay, I'm the one who demanded it). Enjoy!

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My very good friend Shari once told me about an old Jewish proverb – something about how if we could all put our troubles in a bag and set it on a table, and then pick up someone else’s bag, we’d choose our own again.

Funny how often I think about that.

When my son was 4, we’d already known about his peanut/nut allergy for a couple of years. I was having him retested to see if – against the odds – he’d outgrown it. With kindergarten looming (okay, so it was still a year and a half away – I like to get a head-start on my worrying), I was feeling sorry for myself, wondering why my son had to be cursed with a food allergy that would make normal school lunches anything but normal. How would I keep other kids from rubbing their PB&Js in his hair? What would I do if the teacher insisted all the students make ladybugs out of walnut shells? What if my son got tired of salami sandwiches? O, woe is me!!!

A little over the top, I admit.

To get his blood drawn for the allergy test, we went to a nearby hospital. It happens to be a renowned children’s hospital, with the expertise and facilities that draw young patients from across the western U.S.

As we walked down the hall looking for the out-patient lab, we began passing some of those patients and their parents. There were children in wheelchairs, their bodies crumpled and contorted. There were children on gurneys, hooked up to machines that made sure their hearts kept beating or their lungs kept filling with air. There were children with bright smiles and missing limbs, and others with body parts intact, but a glazed-over look to their eyes that belied other damage.

Meanwhile, my 4-year-old whirlwind was running down the hall, shouting excitedly about the primary-colored mechanical water sculpture in the next lobby. As I tried to keep him from clambering into the fountain or hopping across the benches, I felt like I should be apologizing to all the other parents. This was a place for terribly sick children, I thought to myself. My child wasn’t sick – he just had food allergies!

And just like that, my perspective reset itself. All my self-pity was transformed into a sense of shame, and my own bushel-bag of burdens began to look snack-sized.

What had I been whining about? My kid could run, laugh, climb, and get into a thousand varieties of trouble – all before breakfast! So what if I have to be extra careful about the breakfast he comes into contact with? So what if I have to carry an EpiPen? I and my son have the very good fortune to be living in an age when we have EpiPens, knowledgeable doctors, and an amazing variety of safe foods to choose from.

A few minutes later, my son was asking the nurse a dozen questions about drawing blood, and he watched, fascinated, as she drew his. His sharp little mind was so busy figuring out how the needle and tube worked that he forgot to cry. All the way out the door, he chattered about how the next time I needed blood drawn, he could do it for me.

As we stepped out into the sunshine, I tucked my bag of troubles into my pocket. It felt familiar and – while not quite comfortable – a lot lighter.

Now, whenever someone new says, “Oh, dealing with his allergies must be terrible!” I try to imagine what might be lurking inside their bag of troubles. Then I shake my head, smile, and say, “As challenges go, I’ll keep this one, thanks.”

Hope – But Don’t Try This At Home

2009-03-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

It’s all over the news – friends are calling me and emailing me, telling me about the latest study reported last week at a meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. (Read the New York Times report here.) In this study, peanut-allergic children were given a daily dose of peanut powder to desensitize them to peanut allergens.

Basically, by introducing tiny, carefully controlled amounts of the allergen on a daily basis, doctors are slowly building up resistance in the patients’ bodies. Eventually, the theory is that the patients’ bodies are retrained, so that they no longer view the peanut proteins as allergens.

Most of the children in the study are tolerating the therapy without suffering from allergic reactions. This is great news. It means that for most of the kids in the study, their bodies’ immune systems are being slowly retrained, so that they can eventually eat a few peanuts safely.

The doctors involved in the study believe that in two or three years, an actual treatment for peanut allergy may be developed, based on the findings from this study and other related studies going on throughout the world right now.

This is wonderful! At this point, there are two promising treatments – desensitization, and the Chinese herbal treatment FAHF-2.

Though we appear to be on the verge of breakthroughs, we still need to be careful. Doctors involved in this study (and others like them) are worried that people will run out and try these treatments at home, on their own, with disastrous results.

One reason why caution is essential is that the treatment does NOT seem to work for everyone.
Four kids dropped out of the study because they couldn’t tolerate the therapy – even the tiny doses involved in the therapy still caused allergic reactions. Since the therapy starts with a dose equivalent to 1/1000th of a peanut, that’s pretty disheartening for the parents of those four kids.

Another aspect to consider is that these studies are relying on carefully measured doses, in carefully monitored lab situations where help for anaphylactic reactions is immediately available. Most of us don’t have the capability to measure 1/1000th of a peanut accurately, nor the detailed knowledge of the protocols used in the testing to administer these doses safely. A doctor’s guidance is essential.

A third reason for caution is that all of the studies I’ve read about so far are using children with only a single allergy right now. Multiple allergies are difficult to account for in a controlled study, so doctors are only studying how desensitization works on a single allergy – throwing lots of allergies into the mix could greatly change doses, reactions, and chemical interferences.

So while the outlook on the horizon is rosy, don’t throw away your EpiPens yet. Keep your eyes and ears open for news, talk to your board-certified allergist, and follow the study results carefully. But don’t try this at home just yet. But in a few years, perhaps life will be much easier and safer for many of our children. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Democratic Process in Action

2009-03-16T07:17:00.001-07:00

The Utah Legislative session for 2009 is over, and HB 124, which affected the lives of many Utah families who struggle to pay for the formula that keeps their severely allergic kids thriving, didn’t make it to the Senate floor.

That means it failed.

So those families are still faced with paying hundreds of dollars a month for the only formula that their babies can ingest, because insurance companies view it as “unnecessary.”

Frustrating as it was, following the progress of this bill was interesting. I participated in the democratic process for this bill by emailing my local representatives early on, then emailing all of them last week, asking for their support. When it passed the House and was sent to the Senate this week, I emailed Minority Leader Rep. David Litvack asking him to prioritize the bill so that it would get read in the Senate. It was assigned #20 on the list, so it never got read before time ran out.

Despite the fact that the bill failed, this is what I learned: it’s surprisingly easy to participate in this process of government. I sent three little emails. It took maybe a minute of my life each time. Three minutes total. And it came close to making a difference.

What was even more surprising was that I actually got responses from several of the representatives – all but one of the ones who responded said they supported the bill. The one who didn’t outright support it was honest enough to tell me he wanted to learn more about the bill and about why the finance note was removed before he would vote for it. I appreciated that.

These representatives must get tons of emails. They’re faced with a zillion bills to review, make a decision on, and vote on. Most of those bills are either incomprehensible or imbecilic, and this year everything was complicated by the distracting background noise of Utah’s economy being sucked down the drain. And this bill, I admit, probably wouldn’t be high on anyone’s list if they weren’t affected by the diseases that it covers. Yet several of the representatives actually took a minute of their time to write back to me to tell me their stand on it.

It was an interesting experience, even if it didn’t turn out the way we’d hoped. Last year (and the year before that), our allergic families were successful in getting legislation passed that makes it legal for our kids to carry their epinephrine shots in school, and lets responsible adults like teachers, counselors, and coaches get prescriptions to carry and administer epinephrine to kids in their charge. That legislation made it through the legal process successfully. So we know it can happen, and we know there are people in the legislature who care about our medical issues.

So next year, I hope the people who supported us this time will support us again, and we’ll see if this bill gets passed. And I’ll be ready with my mouse poised over the Send button on my email. A little communication with the real people casting the votes really can make a difference. Who knew?

Bring On the Chocolate Bunnies!

2009-03-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

“Here comes Peter Cottontail, hoppin’ down the bunny trail! Hippity hoppity, Easter’s on its way…”

Lucky for you, this blog is text-only, so you don’t have to hear me sing. My son isn’t as lucky, however. Ha! I can’t wait to sing in front of his friends and embarrass him completely.

Okay, so Easter is still five weeks away. But when you have children with food allergies, now’s the time to start planning for those egg hunts and Easter Baskets – or for your Passover Seder feasts – because to find egg-free, milk-free, and nut-free chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, and other goodies, you almost certainly have to order them from an online manufacturer.

So today I’ll offer some ideas and links to places to shop for Easter and Passover goodies, so you can get the jump (ha! I slay myself) on ordering. Trust me, you don’t want to wait until the last minute. Last year, some of the allergy-free chocolate makers ran out of bunnies, so if you waited too long to order them, you were out of luck. This year, many of them have notices saying “Available before March 28 or until supplies are gone.” So this year, we’re all going to be smart little bunnies and do it early, right? Right!

If your kids are only allergic to nuts, you may find Hershey’s chocolate bunnies in the grocery stores – check the label carefully, but I can usually find a nut-free Hershey’s bunny without having to order it. And this year, Hershey’s has a bag of candy-coated chocolate mini eggs that are nut-free. (I got a bag at Smith’s.)

However, if you need to avoid milk or eggs or gluten (or all three), it gets harder. Luckily, there are several really good chocolate manufacturers online who offer allergy-friendly chocolates and candies for every holiday. So check these out:

Vermont Nut Free: Their chocolates are peanut-free and nut-free, but they do have milk and egg warnings on them. But their selection of nut-free chocolates is great – chocolate pops on a stick, bunnies, truffles, gold-foil-wrapped coins, etc. Yummy!

Divvies: Nut-free, dairy-free, and egg-free chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, gummy stars, and chocolate chips! Oh my!

AllerNeeds.com: This online grocer sells allergy-friendly foods from several vendors, but the best part is they sell Enjoy Life! Foods’ Boom Choco Boom chocolate bars in a variety pack of six bars. (Enjoy Life! Foods are free from the top 8 allergens.) They also sell some candy manufactured in Canada’s nut-free and peanut-free factories, so it’s worth checking out.

Amanda’s Own Confections: They offer a whole line of chocolate goodies for Easter and Passover, as well as jelly beans and other candies, all dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and gluten-free!

Chocolate Emporium: Read the ingredients carefully on this website, but they do offer a lot of kosher (parve) chocolate items for Passover, all of which are dairy-free, and most of which are gluten-free. Most of the Passover chocolates do, however, contain nut contamination, and some contain egg whites. The only Passover chocolate item that didn’t contain eggs, nuts, gluten, or dairy that I could find was the chocolate-covered raisins. Their Easter chocolate list has a much larger number of items that are milk-free, nut-free, egg-free, and gluten-free, including bunnies, pops (chocolate shapes on a stick), foil-covered mini eggs, jelly beans, a bunny-shaped chocolate box filled with jelly beans, etc. Call before you order to ensure you get what you need. As an added bonus, all Easter items are kosher. Go figure.

Remember, Easter eggs and Easter baskets don’t have to be filled with candy. Oriental Trading Company offers a bazillion (I counted them) little novelty toys that fit inside Easter eggs or into Easter baskets, and you can buy them by the dozen or more. (Anyone need 144 smiley-face bunny erasers for only $4.99?) And for the ultimate in time-saving, you can even buy plastic eggs pre-filled with little toys (2 dozen for $7.99). Now THAT’s a helpful Easter Bunny.

Hoppy shopping!

“Why We’re Going Nuts”

2009-03-02T11:04:00.001-08:00

Last week, Time magazine printed a great article about peanut allergies, called “Why We’re Going Nuts Over Nut Allergies), by Alice Park. (Read it here.) It’s one of the more balanced, informative, and all-encompassing articles I’ve read in a while. It goes through each aspect of food allergy one by one – what it is, what might be causing it, who is suffering from it, possible on-the-horizon therapies, the hysteria backlash, how airlines are reacting, and how schools are dealing with it, and so on.

If someone you know doesn’t understand much about food allergies, showing them this article would be a good place to start. And the fact that it’s in Time gives it a little more credence for those who are a tad skeptical.

One of the things I like about the article is its moderate voice and impartial stand. It simply states that yes, it’s a real concern, and there are things we can do about it. But in a year when there’s starting to be huge backlash, it breathes a nice sense of calm into the debate.

As with all situations, hysteria and cries for extreme measures do nothing to help our cause. Instead, they incite the other side to react just as strongly the other direction, just as unreasonably. But taking a calm, practical approach, with an eye towards seeing that both sides are able to live with reasonable precautions makes everyone more willing to work together to find a compromise.

Politicians, lawyers, and religious extremists have been proving this to us for thousands of years – scream, and the world will scream back at you. Smile and offer ideas, and the world might just listen. It takes a lot of smiles and a lot of patience, but usually lasting change happens slowly, with reasonable people having reasonable ideas, not through violent people insisting we think their way.

Some folks might say that you can’t get anyone’s attention until you scream. They’re entitled to their opinion. But that’s never worked for me. Being helpful and reasonable, yet steadfast, has gotten me a lot farther. Look at Trace Adkins last year – he raised a huge amount of awareness last year by choosing the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network as his charity on “The Apprentice.”

And the only time he raised his voice was to sing.

The Joy of Cooking???

2009-02-23T07:51:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, I’ve discovered an up-side to the bad economy: I’m cooking more.

It’s not like I didn’t cook before. But we did go out to dinner at least once a week, and I found myself relying on pre-packaged foods for fast dinners on the nights when we were home.

But lately, I’ve been making myself think about dinner more than five minutes ahead of time. It’s making a difference in how we’ve been eating, and I think it’s a good thing.

I’m not one of those people who love to cook. I love to eat, but cooking… not so much. Frankly, I’d rather scrub grout. So it’s always a surprise to me when dinnertime rolls around and I have to – wait for it – dream up a new meal. Hey, didn’t I just do this last night? Why is everyone hungry again? They’ve got a lot of nerve!

But with the economy falling down around our feet, I’ve realized that it’s cheaper to cook than eat out (duh), so I’ve begun looking through my recipe box. For some reason, I cut out recipes from newspapers and magazines all the time. It’s like I think I’ll actually make them sometime. It’s funny and pathetic at the same time. I’m such an optimist. A delusional optimist. I’d like to think it’s one of my cuter characteristics, but I have my suspicions it’s not. Whatever.

So I’m looking through my recipe box and finding things like meatloaf. Hey, I think, I haven’t made meatloaf in years. I wonder if my son the carnivore would like it. I make it, and holy cow! He ate two slices!

It’s not like meatloaf requires a Cordon Bleu education to make. So why did it take me so long to think about preparing it for my family? Oh yeah. I recall the reason now: I have to remember to thaw the hamburger meat in time, and then cook it in the oven for 45 minutes. That means it never fit into my schedule of starting dinner a maximum of 8 minutes before my family all faints from hunger.

My crockpot has been getting a workout lately, too. Gotta love that thing – throw some meat and veggies and a little broth into it in the morning, come home at night and voila! Everything’s done. Whoever invented the crockpot gets my vote for genius of the century (um, the last century, that it).

It hasn’t been easy retraining myself. I don’t plan ahead well. But since I’ve been trying for several weeks, I’ve discovered that it’s getting a little easier. I guess I’m building a new routine, and the results are working pretty well.

The best part about my new cooking routine is that we’re finally eating healthier. Less fat, more fruits and veggies, and fewer chemically-named ingredients. And, of course, less chance of food allergy cross-contamination. I know exactly how each dish was prepared! I know nobody picked the walnuts off the top of the salad before serving it to me because they forgot I said “no nuts, please.” I know the rice doesn’t have almond slivers in it. I know the breading on the chicken is safe.

And the kitchen smells good, too.

If I’m not careful, I might actually start enjoying this cooking thing. (Do flying pigs have enough meat on their wings to make buffalo wings? Hmm…)

Good News from the Medical World

2009-02-16T11:19:00.000-08:00

With all the stress, confusion, and uncertainty that comes with food allergies, wouldn’t it be great to get a little bit of good news for a change? How’s this:

Trials in mice of a Chinese herbal treatment called FAHF-2 protected peanut-allergic mice from anaphylaxis for more than eight months after the treatment stopped.

Really. Perhaps a type of vaccine is finally on the distant horizon!

Di. Xiu-Min Li, an associate professor of pediatrics and the director of the Center for Chinese Herbal Therapy for Allergy and Asthma at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and her colleagues published their findings in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology this month. Their findings reinforce previous studies showing promise for this particular drug, which has already received investigational new drug approval from the FDA. Read an article about this latest study on the Medical News Today website here.

Of course, this is great news for mice everywhere. But what’s even better is they’re conducting human trials right now at Mount Sinai to study the safety and effectiveness of FAHF-2 on even more food allergies, like tree nuts, fish, and shellfish, in addition to peanuts.

Ordinarily, it takes years and years for a new drug to go through all the testing, research, modifications, and approval process before the FDA will finally allow that new drug to become commercially available. So for most of us, even if this drug really works the way we hope it will in humans, it will be years before we will be able to take advantage of it. But even so, this news gives all of us hope for the future of food allergy treatment and prevention.

I can’t imagine how wonderful it will feel to have a medicine like this available for allergic people. Even if it meant the allergic person had a shot every month, it would be worth the peace of mind knowing that an innocent looking cookie would never again betray someone you love.

I am so grateful that there are brilliant minds out there working on this for us. As I sit here on this overcast, cold February day, it gives me a warm feeling of hope, like spring truly is on the way.

To Kiss or Not to Kiss...

2009-02-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s Day is almost here. Yes, it’s that time of year again… the time for love, romance, special dates – and kissing.

Crap.

Just what we food-allergy sufferers need. Something else to worry about.

For young people, kissing is complicated enough. Think what kisses can lead to – brain malfunctions, ruined reputations, marriage proposals, bad dates, broken friendships, unreasonable expectations, dizziness, pregnancy, forgetfulness, poor fashion choices, high credit card bills, lousy steak dinners… and that’s all in a good weekend.

Now, throw in the fact that food allergens can stay in a person’s mouth for hours after they eat, and suddenly you’ve added “scary trips to the ER” to the list.

My son is only ten. He’s still in the “Oh gross, they’re kissing!” stage. Every time he sees someone kissing on TV, he slaps his forehead as if to say, “What are they THINKING?” I’m encouraging this attitude. As far as I’m concerned, he can think kissing is gross until he’s 35. Or 40. Really.

But sadly, I figure I’ve only got another few years (okay, I admit it, I’m optimistic) before the hormones suddenly turn from “eww” to “oooh.” And then I’ll be staying up late, worrying about all the usual things parents of teens worry about, plus that other one: “Did the girl he’s kissing eat peanuts today?”

Food allergies bring a whole new aspect – a really ugly one – to the already dangerous minefield of kissing.

In 2003, the Journal of Investigational Allergology and Clinical Immunology published a paper from Swedish doctors who studied how many allergic people had a reaction after kissing someone who’d eaten the offending food. Their study showed 12% of survey participants had an allergic reaction after kissing. (When they eliminated respondents who “didn’t know” if a reaction was caused by a kiss, the numbers rose to 16%.) That’s not comforting.

As an interesting side note, the doctors surveyed both Russian and Swedish participants. Of those, 12% of the Swedish survey participants reported a reaction, and only 5% of the Russian participants did. I can think of all sorts of jokes here about who you would rather kiss – a member of the Swedish Bikini Team or the Russian Swimming Team, but that would be rude and stereotypical. So I’ll let you come up with your own jokes.

The Mayo Clinic Proceedings website outlines a 2003 case report (apparently 2003 was an extraordinarily bad year for kissing) of a seafood-allergic woman kissing her boyfriend after he’d just eaten shrimp, and then suffering from an anaphylactic reaction and having to go to the hospital.

This case report was only one of many that have been showing up with alarming frequency in the literature, so some doctors in New York decided to study how long peanut residue could stay active in the saliva of people who’ve eaten peanut butter, and whether or not brushing teeth or other “interventions” would help get rid of the allergens. They published their results in 2006. They studied 38 people. Immediately after eating 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, the subjects’ amount of allergens in their mouth varied “considerably,” but many had levels of peanut proteins high enough to cause reactions. They tested again one hour after eating; at that point, 87% had undetectable levels. Unfortunately, that means 13% still had detectable levels of peanut in their mouth.

When they used interventions to cleanse the mouth immediately after eating peanut butter, such as rinsing or brushing their teeth, the allergens were reduced, but still remained in approximately 40% of the samples. Their conclusion: “Patients with peanut allergy require counseling regarding the risks of kissing or sharing utensils, even if their partners have brushed their teeth or chewed gum. Advice to reduce risks, although not as ideal as total avoidance, includes waiting a few hours plus eating a peanut-free meal.”

Another comment in the study added: “Teenagers with peanut and other food allergies need to be reminded that to stay safe, restraint and patience are necessary even in the most intimate situations.”

Yeah, good luck with that. Parents have been trying to remind teenagers to use restraint and patience to stay safe since they were running around poking spears into angry wooly mammoths.

So what’s a teen to do? Well, here’s what the experts recommend:

1. Tell your date what you’re allergic to, and explain how serious it is.
2. Ask your date to refrain from eating those foods on the day of your date.
3. Ask your date to brush their teeth and wash hands if they have eaten something you’re allergic to, and wait AT LEAST one hour before kissing.
4. Keep your EpiPens with you at all times.
5. Wear a medical ID bracelet, so if you end up unconscious, the EMTs will know what to do with you. A bracelet also is a good way to "break the news" to people -- when they ask what the bracelet is for, it's easy to explain food allergies without sounding like you're fishing for a kiss.

As for us parents, here’s what we can do:

1. Worry.
2. Pray.
3. Trust that we’ve taught them well.
4. Love them.
5. Breathe a sigh of relief when they come home safe with that silly look on their face. Despite the silly look.
6. Keep on the lookout for other teens who also have food allergies, and try fruitlessly to arrange accidental meetings between your child and those other teens.

Personally, I’m going to be creating a “dating application” for my son. All of his prospective dates will have to complete the application, submit to a lie detector test, and provide a $100 deposit for ambulance transportation fees before the date commences.

I can hear my son slapping his forehead now.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Peanut Butter Recall

2009-02-02T09:28:00.000-08:00

Q: When is being allergic to food a good thing?

A: When that food is involved in a nationwide recall because it’s contaminated with salmonella.

Two years ago, in February of 2007, peanut butter made in the ConAgra Foods Inc. plant in Georgia was found to be contaminated with salmonella, and hundreds of people fell ill from it. Now, here it is February again, two years later, and another bout of peanut butter salmonella has cropped up, this time from peanut butter and peanut paste processed by Peanut Corp. of America in Georgia. Again, hundreds of people are falling ill – as of January 28, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s web site, 529 people from 43 states and one person in Canada have been reported infected, and “the infection might have contributed to eight deaths.”

Originally, the FDA thought the salmonella was only in peanut butter sold to institutions such as hospitals or nursing homes. But now they’ve realized it could be in any number of products that use peanut paste, from cooking sauces to baked goods, and even pet foods. The list of recalled products is up to 180 products now. (Click here for the CDC’s recall list.)

Silver linings are great, aren’t they? There isn’t often a silver lining to having a food allergy. But right now, there are probably about a million American families that are breathing a collective sigh of relief because this is one food problem they DON’T have to worry about. What a nice change of pace!

We’re always told to count our blessings. But sometimes we forget that blessings come in many disguises, and from the least likely of sources. But right now, I’m counting my son’s peanut allergy as a blessing. I didn’t have to worry about the food I put in his school lunch this morning. I don’t have to worry that my family will become deathly ill from a contaminated box of rocky road ice cream tonight. And I don’t have to spend this afternoon scouring my pantry shelves for the 180 products that have been recalled. I got rid of everything peanut-related 9 years ago. That means I can spend today doing something else, like taxes.

Um…Wait, did I say that was a blessing?

Help Pass H.B. 124

2009-01-26T11:04:00.000-08:00

The Utah Legislature is in session. Now before you go and hide, there’s a good thing happening right now in the legislature. Representative Christine A. Johnson has sponsored a bill (H.B. 124) asking for “Insurance Coverage for Eosinophilic Gastrointestinal Disorders and Short Bowel Syndrome.” (Click here to read the text of the bill.)

What are Eosinophilic Gastrointestinal Disorders? Basically, it’s a disorder that “is characterized by having above normal amounts of eosinophils in one or more specific places anywhere in the digestive system.” In terms the rest of us can understand, these people (and we’re often talking about babies and kids here) have intestines that can’t tolerate or absorb regular foods or even baby formulas composed of whole proteins, fats, or carbohydrates.

People with these disorders are allergic to just about everything. Babies with it can’t eat anything but a specific type of formula made from non-allergenic amino acids that are already broken down so that the baby can more easily digest it. Unfortunately, this formula costs hundreds of dollars a month for a single child, and most insurance companies don’t cover it. Hundreds of dollars a month. Hundreds. Did I mention hundreds?

Rep. Johnson’s bill will direct insurance companies to recognize these diseases as the deadly diseases they are, and will get the insurance company to cover this formula as the medically necessary product it is if the child’s doctor prescribes it.

Without this formula, these babies simply do not thrive. They drop well below range on weight and height charts. They grow very ill. They can’t eat anything, not even mother’s breast milk. Yet most insurance companies ignore it.

So we’re very thankful to Rep. Johnson for sponsoring and filing this bill with the Legislature. If you’ve got a minute or two, call or write to your own state representative and let him or her know how serious this disease is, and how essential covering this formula is for the families affected by it.

If insurance companies will cover Viagra to make babies, the least they can do is cover the medically essential formula that is all that will keep some of those babies alive and thriving.

You go, Rep. Johnson!

Countering Hysteria

2009-01-19T13:06:00.000-08:00

On January 9, 2009, Joel Stein wrote an opinion column in the LA Times about his belief that peanut allergies in children are nonexistent, a result of mass hysteria by affluent parents who want to feel special. (Read his column here.) On January 15, the LA Times printed a “blowback” response from Robert A. Wood, professor of pediatrics and director of pediatric allergy and immunology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and member of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network's medical advisory board, who explained that the disease is an actual disease that affects children regardless of their parents’ financial status or emotional desires. (Read Dr. Wood’s response here.) I’m very glad the Times printed that response. But I also think Joel Stein should hear from some of us “hysterical” moms, too. Here is my own response to Joel Stein.

Dear Joel,

I’m glad no one you love has a severe food allergy (LA Times, “Nut Allergies – A Yuppie Invention,” 01/09/09). I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. The 1 in 20 kids who’ve developed food allergies aren't suffering from hysteria. They're suffering from a condition where a food protein attaches to IgE antibodies on mast cells, causing the mast cells to explode, releasing histamines into the body. This causes a reaction ranging from a mild rash to the shutting down of several body systems, including respiratory and digestive systems. In other words, eating a peanut might give you a rash. Or it might make you stop breathing. It’s unpredictable, even within the same person from one time to the next.

I wish you had been with me last Sunday night at the doctor's office, watching a ten-year-old boy I love swell up and turn red and cold from head to toe. By getting him the medicine he needed immediately, we turned the reaction around and he was fine in a few hours. I suppose we could have told him he was being hysterical and to just get over it. But I'm glad we chose to administer quick medical help instead. I’m not sure your approach would have saved his life.

I'm sorry you think we're inventing numbers. We wish we were. No one knows why our bodies are now identifying normal foods as allergens or why it’s occurring more frequently now -- it probably has little to do with fast genetic mutation, and everything to do with how the chemical environment we live in (which is significantly different than it was thirty years ago) has simply altered our immune systems. That probably also explains the variation between countries, and possibly the increase over the same time period in diseases like autism and hormonal problems in young men.

We didn't choose this disease. Most of us try to minimize our children's risk while minimizing impact on everyone else. But we truly appreciate it when others are willing to accept a few inconveniences to ensure they don't accidentally kill the kid sitting next to them. A few hysterical people, as usual, cloud the issue for everyone else – and those hysterical people can be found on both sides of the issue. Some choose hysteria to get attention from doctors, so their influence is limited to a handful of immediate family and friends. Some choose hysteria to sell columns, so their influence amounts to thousands of readers. Neither is beneficial to those millions of us in the middle who have to find ways to live with the truth of a disease that is scary, but manageable as long as the hysteria is controlled.

Thank you for giving topics like this a little more thought in the future. Lives depend on taking diseases seriously and discussing them rationally.

Sincerely,
Kelley
Mom of a peanut-allergic kid

Accidents Happen

2009-01-12T11:55:00.000-08:00

Last night, my son’s best friend accidentally ate some hidden cheese, and he ended up at the doctor’s office at 10:00 pm with a strong food allergic reaction. It was scary, but all things considered, he was fortunate – it was not as bad as it might have been. His face and neck puffed up and he turned crimson from his head to his toes (looking for all the world like he’d gotten a bad sunburn), but his breathing stayed normal, his lungs stayed clear, and his oxygen level remained great.

He didn’t need to be injected with an EpiPen, but the doctor did prescribe an oral steroid for the next few days, and his mom is keeping him on Benadryl for 24 hours.

He woke up this morning back to his normal color, and with only a faint shadow of puffiness beneath his eyes. We’re all breathing easier this morning.

Now, in the clear light of day, after a good night’s sleep, his parents are going through this episode with an eye towards learning from it.

One of the main lessons is simply this: accidents happen. No matter how vigilant, informed, careful, or prepared you are, it’s still possible to let a mistake slip though. Whether it’s grabbing the wrong food because the package labels are similar, or administering the wrong bottle of medicine because it’s in the same location and you’re panicking, or forgetting to check on the ingredients before your kid reaches for a treat, accidents happen.

It’s easy in a situation like this to let guilt and blame flare up. You’re scared, you’re upset, you’re angry. You lash out. In reality, however, guilt and blame always just make things worse, right when the kid needs to hear supportive, positive, loving words instead. So you have to give yourself permission to be human, and give yourself enough room to get past the guilt and move directly to productive actions that will solve the problem at hand.

Fortunately, this family didn’t go down the blame/guilt route. They recognized that there were enough crazy coincidences all happening at once that no one was to blame – it was truly a series of accidents that no one could have predicted. So they’re able to support each other at a time when that’s what they all need. No one is angry; no one is harboring ill feelings towards each other. Everyone is able to feel relief and love instead, which is the way it should be.

This is the first serious reaction this child has had in nearly ten years. That’s because his parents are the most careful people around. They do everything right. They do everything with an eye towards safety. So they’re both agonizing over this experience. But really, it’s remarkable that they’ve only had one mishap of this size in ten years – that says a lot in their favor, since avoiding milk, egg, and nuts in today’s food-oriented society is a constant battle.

The good news is, they were able to deal with the situation quickly, identify exactly what went wrong, and get him to the doctor for treatment. They couldn’t have done that if they weren’t prepared, so they should feel really good about their abilities to rally in a crisis.

And the boy has now had a bad reaction that he can actually remember (most of his other reactions were when he was very small, so it might be harder for him to remember), so when the next time comes, he’ll know a little more about what to look for.

So rather than beating themselves up about this, the family is looking at the lessons they’ve been able to learn, and they’re going to be even more vigilant, careful, and prepared next time. Of course, we all hope there will never BE a “next time.” But accidents happen. It’s how you handle them that matters, and being prepared is the biggest part of success.

New Year’s Resolutions 2009

2009-01-05T11:01:00.000-08:00

Well, the New Year is underway, and so far, things are going pretty well. Except for the part about losing weight (I gained 5 pounds over Christmas), exercising more (I carried the laundry from room to room – does that count?), working on my novel (haven’t touched it since November), eating healthy (that pizza last night was sure tasty), keeping my house cleaner (the Christmas trees are still up, decorations cover every flat surface, and now there are boxes piled in the living room waiting for me to find the time to put it all away for next year), becoming rich (the lottery tickets I bought in Texas didn’t win), and getting organized (I know that bill is somewhere under this pile of papers – or maybe that pile of papers, or…).

Sigh. A nice, shiny New Year, and I’ve already put a hundred nicks and dents in it. Here we are, Day 5 of 2009, and things look pretty much like they did on Day 365 of 2008. (And, come to think of it, Day 365 of 2007.)

Maybe that’s not all bad. There’s comfort in consistency, after all.

So what if my goals for 2009 look identical to my goals from 2008? They were good goals, and they’re hardly used, so they still look brand-new. I’m all about recycling.

Better yet, as I sit here at my cluttered desk, surrounded by dusty Christmas decorations, maybe I’ll just skip all the big life-changing goals and concentrate on things I like doing. I’m going to continue creating new recipes for my food-allergic son and his friends. I’m going to read more books. I’ll continue to take on freelance writing assignments. I’m going to make time for lunch or coffee with friends more often. I’ll keep writing my novel. I’ll plan the occasional night out with my husband. And I’ll continue to lead the Davis County chapter of the Utah Food Allergy Network.

There. That sounds like a reasonable set of goals. Now I can ignore the Christmas decorations for another day, right?

Happy Resilient New Year!

2008-12-29T09:04:00.000-08:00

Greetings from sea level!

I'm in Houston this week, visiting family. Signs that we're at sea level are everywhere, mainly in the form of damage left by Hurricane Ike back in September. Wooden fences are still lying where they blew over. Blue tarps still cover hundreds of roofs. A storage unit complex nearby is still in shambles. No conversation goes on without some reference to Ike.

Counting blessings is easier when you see what other people had to live through.

But, as always, life goes on and people pick up the pieces and keep moving forward. Our relatives lost part of their roof, and water caved in their second floor ceilings. They've got a new roof now and a new fence, but they're still waiting for a drywall repairman to finish the upstairs rooms.

But they cheerfully welcomed us into their home for the holidays anyway. So here we are, enjoying ourselves thoroughly, spending wonderful holiday moments with folks we love.

I'm taking advantage of being at sea level, too. I've been baking a few of my milk-free, egg-free, and nut-free recipes here, to see what sea level changes I need to make. So far, it's gone well -- the biggest difference I've noticed is that breads take less time to bake here. I almost burned the pumpkin bread because I wasn't used to how fast it would cook here, and my apple muffins didn't rise as much as I thought, so they were kind of flat. But other than that, they tasted good and had the right texture, so I must be on the right track.

Recipes are tricky sometimes, but I have no patience for tricky. If a recipe is too fussy, I throw it away. My recipes, like my houseplants, have to be hearty and forgiving. They have to be adaptable to a busy household, where I'm usually throwing muffins in the oven and watching the clock because I have to have my son at his next sporting or social engagement in exactly 23 minutes, and the muffins will take exactly 17 to bake, 1 to slap onto the cooling rack, leaving 5 to drive to the appointment. You know. Your life is probably a lot like mine. Most people's are, I guess. I forget that sometimes, until I'm face to face with proof that my life is actually pretty darn easy, compared to what others are going through.

So I'm baking at sea level, thinking about life with allergies, and life with hurricanes, and life with all the trials it throws at us. And I'm thinking that we're an awfully resilient species. As 2008 winds to a close, I'm looking ahead to 2009 with more optimism than I have in a while. Part of it is from seeing how people down here are moving ahead despite blue tarps flapping over their heads. Part of it is from being surrounded by loving friends and family, and remembering that they care about us no matter what happens. And part of it is simply seeing that my pumpkin bread turns out no matter where I bake it or even if I nearly burn it. It's a resilient recipe. If my recipe can survive change, so can I, right?

Here's to a resilient New Year!

Hope for This Season of Light

2008-12-22T09:33:00.000-08:00

The season of light is upon us.

Today is the beginning of Chanukah, when Jews light the candles on their menorahs to celebrate the miracle of a sacred lamp burning steadily in the reclaimed temple for eight days on only a single day’s worth of oil. Christmas is on Thursday, when candles everywhere will be lit to welcome the newborn Prince of Peace to earth. Kwanzaa starts on Friday, with candles for Kwanzaa’s seven guiding principles. Yesterday was the winter solstice, and drum circles and candles said good-bye to the shortest day of the year and welcomed the lengthening hours of sunlight. In another week, the New Year will arrive in a shower of booming fireworks.

In the middle of our darkest times of winter, we use candles and fireworks to restore light and remind us that the darkness will not last. The cold will give way to warmth. The ice will thaw. The spring will come. Leaves will bud and flowers will bloom. And we light candles to show we remember, we believe, and we will persevere until light spreads around us once again.

Last week, I was outside at my mailbox when I heard a flock of geese approaching. We live near a bird refuge, so geese are forever flying overhead, even in the winter. I stopped and waited to see them as they came up over the house across the street. It was a small flock. There were nine geese.

And one seagull.

The seagull was white and shining in the sun, almost glowing beside the darker, larger bodies of the geese. But the seagull appeared to be a welcome member of the flock. He soared and glided in the middle of the others, keeping perfect time and formation with them. As one the entire flock, including the seagull, curved into a turn, and they headed for the mountains, finally disappearing in the distance. There was no honking protest. There were no missed wing beats. There seemed to be nothing but comfortable acceptance. The seagull was simply a member of the flock – whether temporary or permanent, I don’t know, but it was clear he was welcome. Adding the seagull didn’t diminish the flock – it enhanced it, adding a quiet splash of sunlight to a routine flight of noisy shadows.

It was a lovely thing to see. If nature can make acceptance look that easy and beautiful, perhaps all hope is not lost for us human beings after all.

So my wish in this season of light is this – that we all find, somewhere in our hearts, the capacity to welcome each other’s light into our little shadowed worlds, because there is strength in numbers and beauty in new colors. And strength and beauty are good things to keep close as we push through the cold months ahead.

May the lights of the season be yours. Merry everything!

Love,
Kelley

Best Intentions

2008-12-15T13:38:00.000-08:00

Last week, at our Davis County chapter meeting, I brought the free samples provided by Enjoy Life! Foods, which are free of the top 8 allergens. A member let her children try the cookies and snack bars, excited that they didn’t have the allergens she knew her kids would react to.

Within minutes, two of her kids were breaking out in hives. We don’t know what caused it yet (she’s going to the doctor to have them retested), but my guess is it might be the sunflower or flaxseed in the snack bars, because those – while not in the “big 8” – are foods that some nut-allergic people are also allergic to.

It was scary. But the only way most of us discover a food allergies is when we actually eat the food. So it could have happened to her and her children anywhere. The only silver lining I could see was that it happened when she was with other moms who understood, and who were all armed with medicine. We didn’t have to use any of the EpiPens in our possession, but she did use Benadryl.

Of course, the irony was obvious – the point of a food allergy support group is to prevent this kind of thing from happening, not to make it happen! So we left feeling terrible that such a thing could happen in our group.

But we did learn several lessons. First, a reaction can happen at any time, and with foods we don’t even know we’re allergic to yet. Second, we need to have our EpiPens and Benadryl within reach, no matter where we go. Third, surrounding yourself with people who understand and can help goes a long way towards keeping the panic level down. And fourth, even the best intentions can go awry.

So check the expiration date on your EpiPens and make sure your Benadryl is ready. Before you go to those holiday gatherings or even out gift-shopping, be sure you’ve got that medicine with you. You just never know.

All our best thoughts are with the mom and her kids who have to add a new item to their list of allergies now. That’s not what they wanted for Christmas at all. But hopefully now that they know, they’ll be able to avoid an accidental reaction in a more inconvenient place or time.

Let’s all ask Santa for a cure for food allergies this year, shall we?

Holiday Shopping

2008-12-08T11:04:00.000-08:00

“Got your holiday shopping done yet?” everyone keeps asking.

Yeah, right. Christmas is still two and a half weeks away. What’s the rush? I’m still washing sand out of my swimsuit from my Thanksgiving trip. I’m still wearing tank tops because I haven’t had time to swap my summer shirts out of the closet and move the winter sweaters in. (It takes a lot of tank tops to stay warm.)

What’s worse is I’m hosting a holiday party tonight, and I still haven’t decorated my tree, hung a wreath, or figured out if I still have paper plates lying around somewhere I can use. I also haven’t cleaned the bathrooms, run the vacuum, or dusted. (Those shelves are supposed to be gray and fuzzy, right? Can I pretend it’s artificial snow and not dust?)

Procrastination seems to be my official vocabulary word for December.

I don’t have any idea what to get my son yet for the holidays. He seems to change his mind every other minute. Now he wants a Wii (fat chance). Yesterday he wanted a Nerf shoot-em-up assault something-or-other (mommy doesn’t do guns, remember dear?). The day before that, it was a PSP (but you already have a Nintendo DS!). Last week, there was something about Guitar Hero, or maybe a real electric guitar. And a boy-sized jeep that really runs (right, keep dreaming). Or a pet (ack!), or a giant Legos city, complete with working plumbing, a functioning government, and trade deals with Japan.

I think I’ll get him a rock. It always worked for Charlie Brown. Or maybe that was Halloween. I can’t keep anything straight these days.

Anyway, while I was flipping desperately through store ads in the paper last week, I came across the Girl Gourmet Cupcake Maker. Seems that’s the popular item for girls this year. It looks kind of cool, but the pink would definitely not go over well with my son, despite the obvious cupcake appeal. I think the manufacturers shot themselves in the foot by making it pink. I know a lot of cupcake-eating boys, myself. Oh well. So far, it’s the only thing NOT on his list.

The really interesting thing about the Girl Gourmet Cupcake Maker, however, is that the cupcake mixes are gluten-free. Who knew? It’s not really advertised anywhere that way – but it’s making the rounds in the food allergy network. The year’s “must have” toy for girls, and it’s gluten-free? That’s pretty remarkable.

Now, if I could just find something remarkable that’s on my son’s list and that doesn’t cost the equivalent of a college education. (Sorry, son, we would have sent you to college, but we got you that “starter” pack of Bakugan cards and figurines when you were 10 instead, remember?)

Good luck with your shopping! And let me know if you find Guitar Hero on sale, for like $1.98.

Caribbean Dreams

2008-12-02T13:02:00.000-08:00

Re-entry is hard.

I love vacations, and I hate coming home. Coming home means piles of laundry, stacks of mail, a to-do list a mile long, looming work deadlines, and cold weather.

Sure, it’s nice to sleep in my own bed. I guess. Oh, who am I kidding? I much preferred sleeping on the 43-foot catamaran we just spent a week on while sailing through St. Lucia and the Grenadines in the Caribbean. Endless miles of turquoise water. Coral reefs teeming with fish in every color of the rainbow. Millions of stars in an unspoiled sky. Steel drum music wafting over the water from the nearby beach bar. Flippers and masks piled in the corner, ready for the next snorkeling foray. Rum punches. Conch fritters. Fish on the grill, freshly pulled from the water off the back of our boat.

I traded all this for gloomy skies, a messy house, and Christmas sale commercials?

Blech.

I’m a traveler at heart, and there’s no way around it. Right now, I’m sitting here with a handful of exotic coins in my pocket – they have scalloped edges and an old-fashion sailing ship on them. A giant conch shell, its inside pink and pearly, sits drying on my kitchen counter. My passport is lying open in front of me, its latest stamp a testament to my wanderlust.

I’m addicted to travel, and my addiction is apparently hereditary. My son has it, too. He got his first passport when he was 4 months old, when we went to Holland. At 2, he went to Hawaii and Sint Maarten in the Caribbean. He’s been to Mexico a couple of times, the British Virgin Islands, Belize, and now St. Lucia and the Grenadines. His wish list includes places like Pompeii, Japan, London, and Paris. Not bad for a kid who just turned 10. He’s gone through two passports now, and we’re about to order his third.

With his food allergies, we have to be a little more cautious and a lot more prepared than some when we travel. I carry a ton of food with me whenever we travel – lots of Enjoy Life! Foods granola bars, fruit snacks, and boxes and cans of things he can eat if we get stuck.

But the real life-saver is that since we chartered our own sailboat, we cooked most of our meals ourselves. Chartering a sailboat for a week is like renting a condo for a week – you have your own kitchen, so you can cook all of your own meals. The big difference is that you can’t usually sail your condo to another island when the mood strikes you!

Another good part about this trip was that our airline experience was positive – we discovered a benefit to the airlines’ recent cost-cutting measures! We flew American Airlines this time, and apparently they’ve done away with free snacks. No little packets of peanuts or trail mix! Instead, they have “food for purchase” on some of the flights. You can purchase snacks like chips, a cheese plate, or even a sandwich, but because they’re pretty expensive ($6), few people did. Personally, I felt a lot more relaxed on the flight because there simply weren’t as many wrappers floating around the plane.

Being able to control the food my son comes into contact with means my luggage is heavier, my planning is a little more complicated, and our meals might not be as spontaneous, but it does mean that we can still succumb to that wanderlust in our hearts.

Now if only I could feel as good about my return to reality. Where did all these bills come from, anyway?

Getting Ready for Thanksgiving Gatherings

2008-11-17T16:09:00.000-08:00

Today, as I was driving around town running errands, I drove past the city park and workers were already putting up holiday lights. It was a little bit of a shock – the sun is shining, the weather is still warm, my husband had to mow the lawn again yesterday… It doesn’t feel like the holidays are approaching. But then I realized Thanksgiving is next week.

How did that happen?

Like it or not, the holidays are, indeed, on their way. And with the holidays come family gatherings, parties, and traditional feasts. And as if there isn’t enough pressure surrounding large family gatherings, when you throw food allergies into the mix, the holidays can sometimes feel like a field of land mines.

To help prepare for Thanksgiving, we had our November meeting of the Davis County support group last week. Our first order of business was to welcome a new member to our group! We spent quite a bit of time discussing safe foods and how to find them, such as chocolate chips, granola bars, cereals, cake mixes, brownies, cookies – all those foods we love to indulge in but have to be especially careful of when we shop and cook for food-allergic family members.

We also exchanged some allergen-friendly Thanksgiving recipes, such as the Salt Lake Tribune’s recipe for Apple Crisp, found here. (Just substitute safe margarine for the butter, and gluten-free flour if necessary.)

When it comes to holiday survival techniques, we talked about a few ideas that have worked for us. One survival technique many of us have used at family gatherings is to simply bring our own food for our food-allergic kids. I used to carry safe chicken nuggets everywhere we went when my son was younger. I still tuck a couple of safe granola bars in my purse even now, just in case we can’t find anything at a party for him to eat – at least that will tide him over until we can make a graceful exit and find him some safe food.

Another tip is when going to a potluck, always volunteer to take the dessert. When people bring desserts, they bring their fanciest creations, which for some reason almost always seems to ensure they will include nuts, chocolate, and dairy ingredients. So volunteering to bring a dessert will cut down on some of that risk, and will ensure that your food-allergic family member gets something sweet to look forward to at the end of the meal.

We ended our meeting by sampling some tasty treats from Enjoy Life! Foods, who graciously sent us a sampling of goodies, such as four flavors of granola bars, two flavors of cookies, chocolate chips, and their latest product – scrumptious Boom Choco Boom chocolate bars! Enjoy Life! Foods makes products that are free of the top 8 allergens (peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, soy, wheat, fish, and shellfish). Locally, we can find their products at Smiths, Dan’s, and Whole Foods Markets, as well as others. Check out their website here.

It was a good meeting, and we enjoyed sharing tips and ideas with each other.

Next week, I’ll be exercising my favorite Thanksgiving survival technique – escaping. I’ll be as far from electronic devices as possible, so I won’t be posting a blog entry next week. But I’ll be back after Thanksgiving, so look for a new blog entry when I return!

Another Study, Another Contradiction

2008-11-10T09:33:00.000-08:00

Yet another study about peanut allergies has been published this week, and this one just adds to the confusion. Welcome to the non-exact science of food allergies!

The October 2008 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology has published an article (click here for the article) detailing a study in which Jewish populations in the United Kingdom and in Israel were compared. They used Jewish subjects in both countries to try to level the playing ground between the two groups as much as possible, with both groups sharing similar genetics and social and economic backgrounds.

In the U.K., mothers are advised to avoid peanuts while pregnant and nursing and to avoid feeding their infants peanuts, so at nine months of age, only 10% of the U.K. children in the study there were eating peanuts. In Israel, there is no such recommendation, so 69% of Israeli children were eating peanuts. What they found is that 1.85% of children in the U.K. have peanut allergy, while in Israel, only 0.17% of the children have peanut allergy.

In other words, in the U.K., where mothers limit children’s exposure to peanuts, kids were ten times more likely to have a peanut allergy than in Israel.

Now what?

The conclusion many people will leap to is simple – early exposure to peanuts is GOOD for you! But is it really? Other studies have shown that early exposure INCREASES the rate of peanut allergy. As so often happens, scientific studies are contradicting each other, and no one understands why.

Many of us who have children with peanut allergies would question this finding, at least from our own experience – I ate peanut butter sandwiches throughout my pregnancy because it was one of the few foods I could stomach during those nauseating months, and yet my son reacted the first time I let him have a bite of peanut butter. If early introduction should have prevented his allergy, all those sandwiches I ate when I was pregnant should have made him a little peanut-eating superman. On the other hand, he was over a year old when I gave him that sandwich, so maybe if I’d given him peanut butter when he was 4 or 5 months old… who knows?

The authors recognize that one study such as theirs cannot be used to reverse current recommendations. In fact, the study says more “randomized controlled interventional studies…are therefore required to determine whether peanut avoidance or the early dietary introduction of peanut will prevent [peanut allergy]. Until such evidence is obtained, current recommendations should remain unchanged.”

Human beings love simple answers. We like one-to-one correspondences. We like to find a direct line between two points. And it really, really makes us mad when we find a nice, straight line, and then someone has the audacity to point out that our straight line falls apart when the end-points are moved around a bit.

So although the study used two groups of Jewish children, all the variables weren’t controlled. What environmental chemicals are used in the U.K. that aren’t used in Israel? What other foods are frequently given to Israeli children that could be providing a kind of protection that U.K. kids aren’t eating? Do both groups have the same chemicals in their drinking water, in their cooking utensils, in their bread? What medicines do the children in each group receive? How long are they nursed?

There are thousands of variables involved when it comes to analyzing the human body chemistry, and I don’t envy scientists the job of sorting them all out as they wage this ongoing battle against food allergies. But I salute them and cheer them on.

I don’t know what to think about this new study. I don’t know that I believe early introduction will save children. I don’t know that I DON’T believe it.

But I do believe that the more studies like this that are performed, the closer we’ll get to understanding what is going wrong inside our bodies. It won’t be easy – when our bodies decide a nutrient is a poison, something outside the boundaries of logic is at work, and it will require thousands of different scientific minds thinking in thousands of different directions before we round up enough points to show us that the lines are really connecting in a meaningful way.

I’m glad this study has been published – not because I want to see a new push for early introduction of peanuts, but because I want to see another group of scientists say, “What? Is that true?” and dig into their own new study to verify, contradict, or more likely, cast more confusion on this conclusion. That’s the only way we will advance this frustratingly non-exact science of food allergies.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds Recipe

2008-11-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

Another goblin-glaring, spirit-spooking, monster-mashing day has come and gone. My son the Human Whirlwind dressed up like a Clone Trooper from Star Wars. We went to some friends’ house for trick-or-treating and Halloween hi-jinx and had a great time.

As usual, we didn’t let food allergies slow us down – for dinner, the kids had safe hot dogs wrapped in safe Pillsbury breadsticks so they looked like mummies… um, the hot dogs looked like mummies, that is – not the kids. (The grown-ups opted for hamburgers instead of hot dog mummies.) We also had Bush’s Baked Beans (no milk, eggs, or nuts), Jell-O Jigglers in Halloween shapes, chips and salsa, and safe carrot cake cupcakes with icing decorated like pumpkin faces and spider webs.

We didn’t go hungry. Somehow, we never do!

Every once in a while, I like to try something new, so this year I decided to roast the pumpkin seeds that I pulled out of the jack-o-lanterns that my son and I carved the night before Halloween. I’ve never tried it before, but they turned out pretty tasty. After reading a bunch of different recipes, I combined the best ideas of all of them, and this is what I came up with. If you still have pumpkins sitting on your porch that you never got around to carving (I still have several), open them up and roast the seeds for a savory snack. Bring a bowlful to your next gathering and watch how fast they vanish into thin air!

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

1 quart water
2 Tbsp salt
2 cups pumpkin seeds (about one large-ish pumpkin’s yield)
2 Tbps safe margarine or olive oil
1 tsp garlic salt (or 1/2 tsp garlic powder and 1/2 tsp regular salt)
1 tsp seasoned salt

Pull the seeds out of the pumpkin, removing as much of the strings as possible. Rinse. Bring the water and 2 Tbsp of salt to a boil, then add the pumpkin seeds and boil for 10 minutes. Drain, spread out on paper towels, and dry overnight.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. In a saucepan or skillet, melt the safe margarine. Remove from heat and add the pumpkin seeds to the melted margarine. Sprinkle with the seasonings and stir thoroughly, so that all the seeds are coated. Spread evenly in a single layer on a large cookie sheet.

Bake for 30 – 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, until crisp and golden. Let cool. Store in the refrigerator in an air-tight container.

Some people like to eat them shell and all. Others like to remove the shell first, like sunflower seeds, and eat only the green soft seed inside. Either method is tasty – it’s up to you!

CDC Reports Increased Food Allergies

2008-10-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

Last week, food allergies were in the news again. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report saying three million children in the U.S. have food or digestive allergies in 2007, which is an 18% increase in a decade (click here to see the report). But those numbers are a lot smaller than the numbers FAAN, researchers at the University of Chicago, and other food allergy experts have estimated – the usual estimate is about eight million children and four million adults in the U.S., and rate is estimated to have doubled among young children in the last five years.

Even though the CDC’s conservative numbers are much smaller than everyone else’s, they still show the same overall trend – food allergies are increasing rapidly, and we still don’t know why.

This latest finding from the CDC really didn’t add anything to what we know about food allergies. It didn’t say how close various cures may be. It didn’t say why the rate is increasing so drastically. It didn’t offer new ideas on how to prevent food allergies.

But it did spur the news media to discuss food allergies again, like this interesting AP news story on the Allergy and Asthma Source website and this report from Reuters. And this time, because the severity of food allergies is becoming more well-known, some news outlets took the opportunity to report on related stories. For example, ABC News did a report not on the CDC’s findings per se, but on the promising ongoing study on peanut desensitization (click here). They also included a link to an April story they did on school bullying using peanut products as weapons (click here).

Once upon a time, food allergies were considered too obscure to warrant any attention from news outlets. But now, food allergies are prevalent – celebrities talk about their food-allergic children, school districts around the country are tackling the problem head-on, and states are slowly but surely enacting guidelines for schools to use when handling children with food allergies. The U.S. is becoming more aware, and the news media is more willing to address the issue.

This is great news, indeed.

While we crave new advances, cures, and preventions, we are still happy with simply increasing awareness. Simply put, the more people in society who understand how dangerous food allergies are, the safer we food-allergic adults and our food-allergic children will be.

This week has been an encouraging week for us, because of the CDC’s release and the way the news media has responded to it.

Teenagers, Rollercoasters, and Other Halloween Fears

2008-10-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my son and I went with some friends to Lagoon, our local amusement park. Each fall the park stays open on weekends for “Frightmares” – most of the rides are open, and they add a few haunted houses and change their musical shows to be sung by vampires or chainsaw-wielding loonies. It’s pretty fun, but yesterday was a beautiful, warm 70-degree day, and the entire state of Utah was there. The lines were so long we didn’t even bother trying to get into the haunted houses – it would have eaten up the few hours we had. So we stuck to the roller coasters and other rides, which suited us just fine.

Usually when we go to Lagoon, my son’s favorite treat is an Icee – one of those frozen slush drinks. We know they’re nut-free, so we don’t usually branch out of our comfort zone. Yesterday, however, the friend we were with wanted to get a snack, and my son decided he wanted something different.

“Please, Mom, can you ask about the pretzels?” he begged.

Grrr. I hate asking 16-year-old food service employees about food ingredients. The blank looks don’t do much for my confidence. And I especially hate trying to sort out the safety of food when there’s a long line forming behind me.

But because I dote on my son, I broke down. Surprisingly, the little kiosk that sold the pretzels didn’t have a line, so I had both 16-year-old employees to myself. “My son’s allergic to nuts,” I began. “Do you know if your pretzels have any nut contamination?”

Blank looks. “Uh…” one said. The future of America, I thought to myself, and shuddered.

I tried again. “Or maybe you have the packaging that the pretzels came in, and I could check the ingredients label?”

That lit a light-bulb. “Oh, maybe…” she said, and rummaged under the counter. She pulled out a giant flattened cardboard box and pushed it up to the small window so I could read it.

The only big-8 allergen it listed was wheat! My son did his little air-guitar victory dance right there in the middle of the sidewalk.

Both 16-year-old employees looked a little bewildered, but they were happy to sell me a pretzel.

So that was my success story for the week. I nudged myself out of my comfort zone and braved a couple of glassy-eyed teenagers, and my son not only lived to tell about it, but he got to add a new treat to his repertoire. And I got to be the hero.

All-in-all, it was a good day. Well, except for the part about sitting in the front row of the Wicked rollercoaster. I’m still trying to forget that.

Trick-or-Treating Safely

2008-10-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night, we held our October meeting for the Davis County chapter of the Utah Food Allergy Network. We welcomed a new member to our group – he’d just found out a few days before about his children’s allergies, so we helped him by discussing safe brands of food, suggestions for surviving restaurant outings, and other ways to handle this new world of living with food allergies.

We also talked about Halloween. Trick-or-treating time is only two weeks away! Kids everywhere are choosing their costumes, begging for big orange pumpkins, and dreaming of giant bags of candy.

But for us parents of food allergic kids, Halloween can be stressful. Should we let them go trick-or-treating? Should we have a party instead? Should we stay home, lock the doors, and turn out the lights? What about that giant bag of unsafe candy?!!

In our family, we’ve discovered that the candy is really the least important part of the holiday. The adventure is the best part. Candy seems like the goal (“I’m going to fill this WHOLE bucket!”), but it’s really just the excuse for dressing up, running around the neighborhood in the dark squealing with flashlights, and getting together with friends.

Focus on the adventure, and create your Halloween traditions around the parts of the holiday your kids love best. If they like to trick-or-treat, don’t be afraid of that. There are plenty of things you can do with unsafe candy afterwards, and if the kids know about the rules ahead of time, it will be surprisingly easy to keep them safe while doing it.

Here are some tips for safe trick-or-treating that we talked about at our meeting:

Tip #1: No one eats anything until everyone gets home and the parent reads the label on every piece of candy. That way, no one is eating unidentified foods and having a reaction while you’re out in the dark a block away from home. Make sure the kids agree, understand, and agree again. No one sneaks anything (not even Dad).

Tip #2: If you child is super-sensitive to an ingredient, you might have them wear gloves with their costume, so that any allergenic candy that touches their hand on the way into the bag doesn’t cause a skin reaction. Toss the glove in the wash or in the trash when you get home.

Tipe #3: Unlabeled candy is assumed to be unsafe. Period. The only exceptions are brand-name candies that you are already familiar with and know are safe. (For example, I know Starbursts and Skittles are okay for my son, so I’ll let him keep those.) If there is a type of candy that he’s particularly interested in, I might promise to look for it at the store the next day, and read the ingredients there. But it goes into a separate container until we’ve seen it at the store and verified its safety.

Tip #4: Before you head out on your adventure, talk about what you’re going to do with any candy when the night is over. Here are some ideas:

1) Go trick-or-treating with a friend, and at the end of the night, dump both kids’ candy together, then make two piles – a “safe” pile for the allergic kid, and the other pile for the non-allergic kid. If they both know about this plan beforehand, they are usually more than willing to do this.

2) Buy a bag of safe candy ahead of time, and at the end of the night, let your child “trade” you for all the unsafe candy he brought home.

3) “Buy” the unsafe candy from your child – but establish a price ahead of time, such as a nickel a piece, a dollar a pound, or the whole kit and caboodle for a new DVD, a small toy, a trip to the movies, a night out with Dad, a visit to the dollar store, or other such treat.

4) Look for a dentist or other business in your area that buys candy from kids on the day after Halloween. There’s at least one dentist in Layton that does. The kids get money, and the dentist donates the candy to a children’s hospital, I think.

5) Let the child “donate” the unsafe candy to Mom or Dad, so they can take it to work and share it with their coworkers.

6) Let the child donate the unsafe candy to a local women’s shelter, food bank, homeless shelter, or family of an Iraqi soldier – the soldiers always seem to appreciate candy that they can share with friends or give to Iraqi children.

Don’t let Halloween spook you. There are plenty of ways to celebrate safely – have a party at your house, go trick-or-treating with a plan for replacing the unsafe candy, visit a haunted house or Lagoon’s Frightmares, or rent The Nightmare Before Christmas and snuggle up together in the dark.

An especially fun idea for celebrating is to go to UFAN’s Halloween party on October 25 – it’s a food-free party that every kid will love! Click here for more details!

Hunting the Elusive Safe Candy Corn

2008-10-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

It’s that time of year again – candy corn season! I love candy corn. I don’t know why. It’s kind of a ridiculous craving. After all, what’s so appealing about artificially colored bits of sugar? Beats me. But it’s hard for me to get into the autumn spirit without it.

Alas, it’s a bitter-sweet craving, though, because there are no brands of candy corn that are nut-free. (Not to mention they usually contain egg, too.) Three years ago, Target produced their own bags of candy corn that had no nut warnings on them. I was ecstatic! I even had their service desk call their manufacturing plant, who assured me that there was no nut contamination! Finally, my son could try my favorite Halloween treat! He loved them, and I was thrilled!

Unfortunately, it was a short-lived thrill. The next year, they didn’t offer that candy anymore. Oh sure, I finally get to share candy corn with my son, he’s developed a candy-corn sweet tooth like his mother, and now I can’t get them anymore. Great. So now I’m back to compulsively checking the ingredients label of every bag of candy corn I walk by. All brands we’ve found have a nut cross-contamination warning. I even asked my wonderfully helpful contact, Ronni, at Enjoy Life! Foods for help finding some. She asked her contact at the Allergy Grocer, and that contact said that no one is making allergen-safe candy corn yet.

Bummer.

My friend Kim was laughing at her own desperation this weekend, because she discovered a greeting card in the store that contained a small packet of candy corn, and she found herself reading the ingredients label, hoping they were safe. She was already calculating how many of the greeting cards she’d have to buy in order to get a reasonable candy-dish full of the colorful little treats when she found the words in the ingredients label that dashed her hopes. They weren’t safe.

So, what’s a food-allergic mom to do? Hit the internet for a do-it-yourself solution, of course. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to not fear the mixing bowl. This morning, I went on the hunt. Surely someone somewhere has tackled the elusive candy corn and developed their own recipe, right?

Right! I found a vegan recipe for candy corn at “The Urban Housewife” blog. Click here for the recipe. It does call for soy milk, but I'm hoping you can substitute rice milk if you're allergic to soy. I haven’t tried making it yet (I’m going to have to psych myself up for a 15-minute kneading session, since I haven’t worked out in … uh… decades?... and my upper arm muscles bear a striking resemblance to Jell-O), so I can’t vouch for the recipe, but it looks reasonable and the photos look tasty. (Maybe I can just show the photos to my son. “Here, sweetie, don’t they look tasty? Just pretend Mommy made some for you, ‘kay?”)

But if you’re a candy-corn junkie like me, and you’ve got the upper body strength to wrestle these little morsels into shape, this might be just the ticket to a tasty Halloween! And I like the Urban Housewife’s suggestion of hosting a candy-corn-making party so that you can share the kneading duties with friends. What a great idea for a kids’ party activity, too!

So all hope is not lost for us candy corn addicts. Where there’s a sweet-tooth, there’s a way. Enjoy this recipe, and many thanks to the Urban Housewife for sharing her recipe!

I Made a Card!

2008-09-30T13:33:00.000-07:00

OK, all you crafty types... I made a card for World Card Making Day and posted it on that website to share. You can see it by clicking here (I'm "NoPeanutsMom").

I am NOT a card-maker. So my effort is kind of wimpy. But surely someone out there can make a cooler card about food allergies. Do it, post it, and help raise awareness!

Celebrate World Card Making Day!

2008-09-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

Are you ready for the third annual World Card Making Day? It’s almost here – this Saturday, October 4, is the big day! It’s a day set aside for card-makers all over the world to share the fun of card-making.

You might think I’m joking, but I’m not. Retail stores all over the world are hosting card-making events like workshops, classes, contests, and sales. Craft bloggers are blogging about it. Card-making enthusiasts are having card-making parties with their friends and family.

It’s a pretty big deal in paper-crafting circles. How do I know so much about it? I’m the project manager of World Card Making Day, working for CKMedia, the publishers of magazines like Paper Crafts, Simple Scrapbooks, Creating Keepsakes, and Digital Scrapbooking. As a freelance writer, I do a lot of work for CKMedia, but managing World Card Making Day was something new for me. I didn’t even know such a holiday existed before, but now that I’ve experienced it first-hand, I love it!

As part of the World Card Making Day festivities, ordinary card-makers like you and me are invited to post of photo of a card we make on the official World Card Making Day website’s Creation Corner Gallery. Every day this week, the editors of Paper Crafts magazine will select one card from the Gallery and post it as the Featured Card on the Paper Crafts website. (Featured cards even win a prize!)

So I had a great idea for World Card Making Day – what if we took this opportunity to make a card to send to someone we know who lives with food allergies? Make the card, take a photo of it, and post it on the World Card Making Day site. You’ll spread awareness of food allergies, brighten someone’s day, and maybe even win a prize!

What kind of card could you make for food allergies? Here are some ideas:

· A “Cheer Up” card for someone who’s had a rough week with food allergies.
· A “Thinking of You” card, with an allergen-free recipe tucked inside.
· A “Thank You” card for someone who went out of the way to help your family with food allergies, such as a parent who served popsicles instead of ice cream at their kid’s birthday party because your milk-allergic child was invited, or a relative who left the almonds out of the traditional family green bean casserole at the last holiday gathering.
· A “Thank You” card for a teacher who eliminated peanuts from her classroom.
· A “Happy Birthday” card for a food-allergy parent, attached to a new allergen-free cookbook.
· A “Happy Halloween” card, with a list of things to do with unwanted Halloween candy after trick-or-treating, like addresses of dentists who buy back candy for cash.

I’m sure we can all come up with more great ideas for telling people how much we appreciate them in our ongoing battle to keep our families safe.

So get out your scissors and paper, get crafting, and brighten someone’s day! Then share your card with the rest of the world by posting it online here.

Happy World Card Making Day!

Egg Cartons and Pinto Beans

2008-09-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

Every year, Kim and I get to search for safe alternatives at our sons’ school for parties, craft supplies, and other activities. It begins to feel like a scavenger hunt sometimes: “We need some egg-, milk-, and nut-free gum drops to use on a gingerbread house. I’ll start with the stores on the west side. You hit the stores on the east.”

We’ve already had our first scavenger hunt of the year now. Our boys’ fourth grade teacher uses egg cartons and pinto beans to help her students understand division and multiplication. They use the twelve sections of the egg carton and divide up the beans between them – a good tactile reinforcement of math.

The only problem is, the used egg cartons the teacher has been saving for several months to use in the classroom aren’t safe for Kim’s egg-allergic boy. So off on a scavenger hunt we went!

First, I tried ice cube trays. At Target, the ice cube trays had sixteen compartments. At the dollar store, they had fourteen compartments. I stood in the aisle, a mountain of blue and white ice cube trays in front of me, and called Kim. “They have 14 compartments. Do you think that’s okay?”

“Maybe we could saw the extra two off the end,” she suggested.

“Or maybe we could paint the extra two compartments a different color and tell the kids not to use them,” I said.

Both solutions sounded kind of lame. We thought for a minute. Then Kim had an idea. “Forget the ice cube trays,” she said. “Let me make some phone calls.”

Later that afternoon, Kim had found an egg farm in the phone book, called them, and spoke to a nice man who just happened to have several dozen brand-new, unused egg cartons, still in their plastic wrappers, sitting in his office. It turns out they’d changed their packaging recently, and these egg cartons were the leftover old style and he didn’t know what to do with them.

Kim did.

So she drove out to the egg farm, and drove away with 54 unused, uncontaminated egg cartons.

When she took them to the school this morning, the teacher gave her a strange look. Kim quickly explained why these cartons were safe, and the teacher was very relieved. “I thought surely you should know egg cartons weren’t safe for your own kid!” the teacher laughed.

So all is good now. I’m buying a new bag of pinto beans this afternoon for the teacher to use (because her old ones would be contaminated with last year’s used egg cartons). So by tomorrow, the kids will be multiplying and dividing their way to a whole new level.

And Kim and I can chalk up another successful scavenger hunt!

Fresh Veggies and Other Signs of Fall

2008-09-15T10:29:00.000-07:00

It’s September, and the leaves on the mountainside are turning. The hummingbirds, tired from their air battles at the feeders during August, are zooming off on their migrations. The geese, which have been practicing flying in formation over our house for weeks, have finally gotten the “V” thing down (after various ill-advised attempts at other letters of the alphabet, such as “Q,” which generally involved mid-air collisions and noisy retorts of indignation). They’re nearly ready for their southern journey.

Evenings are chillier; afternoons are bright and warm, but no longer hot. The swimsuits are put away, and a few sweaters have moved to the front of the closet. And the farmers’ markets and fruit stands are stocked with the vegetables and fruits of fall.

At our Davis County UFAN chapter meeting last week, we celebrated the return of fall by sharing some favorite veggie recipes, all free of the top 8 food allergens. It turns out, all but one were sweet potato recipes – but all were different and delicious!

Our discussion topics ran the gamut, as they usually do. We discussed doctors, and how a board-certified allergist that is experienced in food allergies can get completely different test results from a general practitioner or pediatrician who merely dabbles in allergies. We applauded the ways one member found to boost the nutritional value of rice milk for her daughter. We talked about how the Alexander the Elephant Goes to School DVD does a great job of teaching school-kids about food allergies, and two members gave their copies to another member to show to a kindergarten class.

As usual, the discussion was lively and informative, and we enjoyed being together. For those of you who couldn’t join us, here’s my recipe for Fasoulakia (also spelled Fashoulakia – Greek Green Beans with Tomatoes). Enjoy!

Fasoulakia

1 c. onions, diced
2 T olive oil
1/4 c. safe margarine
2 cans (14.5 oz each) diced tomatoes (don’t drain), or about 5 fresh tomatoes, diced
2 cans (14.5 oz each) green beans, drained (I prefer whole beans, not cut), or about 2 lbs fresh green beans (steamed)
2 cubes Knorr’s beef or chicken bouillon (Knorr’s is egg- and milk-free, but Wyler’s isn’t safe)
1 clove garlic, minced or crushed
fresh oregano or parsley, chopped (optional)

Over medium heat, sauté onions in oil and margarine until they begin to get transparent. Do not over-brown them. Add tomatoes and bring to a boil. (If using fresh tomatoes, add a little water to keep moist.) Cook about 5 minutes (or a little longer if using fresh tomatoes). Add green beans, bouillon cubes, garlic, and chopped herbs (optional). Cook for 5 more minutes or until heated through. Don’t let all the liquid boil off or the beans will burn, so if necessary, add just a little water. Serves 6.

Off to a Good Start

2008-09-08T08:54:00.000-07:00

Two weeks of school gone; only 37 more to go. Not that my son’s counting or anything. But when his favorite subjects are recess and P.E., and P.E. is only taught once a week, the days get kind of long.

Personally, I’m glad the first two weeks are over. Those are usually the most stressful for me and Kim (the mom of my son’s best friend), because that’s when we make the rounds giving food allergy presentations in school. First, we meet with our boys’ teachers to tell them about their allergies and talk to them about classroom strategies, such as keeping their lunch boxes separate from all the other kids’, identifying a location for their medicine, and so on.

Next, our principal invites us to give a presentation at her staff meeting, so we can tell ALL the teachers about food allergies. Because we give this talk every year, some of the teachers have heard it so many times they joke that they could give the talk themselves. But none of them take me up on my offer to trade places! And they admit the refresher is helpful. Other teachers are new to our school – and some are new to the United States – so the presentation is even more valuable for them. This year, our school has a nursing consultant (a parent volunteer who has officially signed on with our school to be our health official), so she helped with our presentation this year, which was very reassuring.

Finally, Kim and I gave one more presentation – this one to the lunch room staff, several of whom are new this year.

Because Kim and I have done these presentations every year, we no longer have to screw up our courage to go plead to get on their agendas. At this point, it’s an accepted and assumed notion that we’ll be doing these presentations, so the principal and the lunchroom manager actually came to us and asked us when we could come do our presentations.

That’s a great feeling. It shows us that food allergy awareness and precautions are important in our school. It doesn’t mean we never have food issues at school. We do, frequently. But there are precedents, rules, and guidelines, and when a problem comes up, we have those to rely on and to help resolve those issues. We’re not re-inventing the wheel every time a question arises, and we’re not fighting as much of an uphill battle.

So the school year is off to a good start, and the teachers and lunchroom staff are as prepared as we can help them be.

Now, if we can just get through the next 37 weeks...

Preparing for Natural Disasters

2008-09-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

We had a little storm this morning. The clouds grew black, the lightning and thunder struck, and the rain fell for about 15 minutes. We even got a bit of pea-sized hail. Now it’s cool (50 degrees), cloudy, and breezy, with a bit more rain just starting to fall. My son’s soccer practice got cancelled, and he and his friend are playing in the basement today instead of out riding their skateboards. So much for a Labor Day last-day-of-summer kind of holiday.

But as Labor Days go, we’re having a MUCH better one than the folks along the coast in Mississippi and Louisiana. Hurricane Gustav is lashing at levees in New Orleans, shredding the cypress trees in Gulfport, and tearing at emotional and physical scars just starting to heal from Katrina three years ago.

It’s hard to imagine living through a natural disaster. At least today, because the sky was low and menacing when I woke up, I felt a small connection to the people in Gustav’s path. When Katrina hit New Orleans three years ago, I stood on my porch and looked out at a beautiful blue-sky day, and tried very hard to understand the devastation going on at that very moment in Louisiana. It seemed impossible that the weather over my head could be so very different from – and indifferent to – what was going on there.

Every time a natural disaster hits somewhere in the world, I think of all those people trying to escape. If they have a few minutes, they throw some scant belongs into a suitcase and hit the road. How do you decide in a few minutes what to take and what to leave behind?

Personally, it takes me at least 12 hours to pack a suitcase for a weekend away. And that’s when it’s a planned holiday, not a mad rush for safety. So years ago, when an earthquake had hit California on another holiday, and I spent the day watching the news reports, I decided to finally do what all the experts recommend – pack an emergency kit. With the TV showing photos of crumpled bridges and buildings, I got out a notepad and began making a list. Then I went to the store and began stocking up on all the things I knew I’d need.

Now, every year I go through our emergency kit and update it. I replenish the food. I swap out old medications for new ones. I take out the clothes my son’s outgrown and put in bigger sizes. I update the phone numbers and financial information that we would need if we found ourselves evacuating on short notice.

One thing I make sure I have is plenty of food that my son can eat, as well as his Benadryl and EpiPens. When I hear about people staying in emergency shelters, I worry about the ones who show up with food allergies. I doubt the shelters are equipped to handle people with food allergies – especially multiple food allergies. Perhaps they are – maybe they have meals set aside for people allergic to gluten, milk, eggs, and nuts. But more likely, they’re making do with whatever they have on hand, and the cross-contamination alone must be a constant threat.

If you have an emergency kit, or if the Gustav hurricane footage is making you think today is the day to put one together, be sure you put safe food, Benadryl, and EpiPens at the top of your list. One emergency at a time is enough.

Back to School Volunteering

2008-08-25T12:09:00.000-07:00

First day of school.

The new clothes. The new backpack. The new lunch box. The new scissors. The new binder. The new haircut. The new EpiPens.

For my son, it’s back to the school morning rush, the homework, and the little social dramas that make up the school day. It’s back to a regular schedule and regular bedtimes and regular dinners.

For me, it’s back to my second volunteer job (in addition to my regular job and my other volunteer job). All school year, I volunteer in my son’s school. My son loves for me to be there. At 4th grade, he’s still happy to see me walk into his classroom. He even hugs me. It’s gratifying to see that as much as he wants to hurry up and become a grumpy, angst-ridden, sullen teenager, there’s still my little sunshiny kid inside there. So I carve a few hours out of my crazy work schedule to spend time in the classroom.

There’s another benefit to my being in the school every week that my son doesn’t realize. And, no, I don’t just mean that I can spy on him when I’m sitting in the back of the room sorting math worksheets. Because I’m in there so often, the teachers get to know me. They know they can count on me. They get to know me on a friendly basis, and we develop a sort of relationship that is much stronger than it would be if we only saw each other once every semester at those slightly nerve-wracking parent-teacher conferences.

That kind of relationship comes in handy when you have a food-allergic kid. If the only time they ever saw me was when I had a worry or a complaint about food in the classroom, I don’t think they’d ever be very happy to see me. I would become “THAT” mom, and no one ever enjoys being "THAT" mom. "THAT" moms seldom succeed in getting teachers to accommodate them willingly.

I’ve also found that just seeing me in the hallway often reminds teachers to ask me about upcoming food issues, like whether they can have salsa and chips on Cinco de Mayo. I’ve heard the sentence, “Oh, you just reminded me… tomorrow we’re doing such and such with food, is that okay?” so many times, that I know they’d never remember to call me and ask about these things before-hand. So by being visible to them on a weekly basis, I jog their memory and keep the food allergy issues at the front of their mind. Otherwise, I’m sure they’d forget.

I understand. Teachers are just as frantically busy as I am. When ever hour of the day is filled with half-a-dozen urgent tasks, we forget things. We have good intentions. But we still forget.

So I take a deep breath, set my alarm a little earlier, and work a couple of hours of volunteering into my weekly schedule. It makes my son happy. It makes the teachers happy. It makes the other kids in school who have allergies happy (even if they don’t know it).

And it makes me happy (even if I’m grumbling about the less-than-attractive bags under my eyes), because it makes the school a little bit safer for my son. After all, I want him to use the new scissors, the new backpack, and the new lunch box. But I don’t want him to use those new EipPens. Not even once.

It's Back to School Time!

2008-08-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

First things first: Oksana Chusovitina won the silver medal last night! Yea! (I’m not even going to mention how it should have been a gold, and Alicia Sacramone should have gotten the bronze. No siree. Not gonna mention it.)

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system…

As of today, there is one more week of freedom for my son. One more week of staying up too late, hanging out with friends, reveling in the glorious sunshiny afternoons of summer vacation.

Then, blammo! Just like that, it will be all over, and then it’s back to uniforms, lunchboxes, worksheets, sitting still at a desk all day, asking permission to go to the bathroom, and worst of all – homework.

My son is refusing to think about it. As far as he’s concerned, life is one big summer, punctuated by annoying periods of darkness called school, which he effectively wipes from his memory every June.

Whether or not HE wants to think about it, I HAVE to. And so do a lot of other parents. That’s why back-to-school was the topic of discussion at our Davis County chapter meeting of UFAN last week.

We welcomed six new families to our group last week. Some were newly diagnosed with food allergies and trying to find out how to adjust to a new way of thinking about food. Others have been living with food allergies for a while, but are facing preschool or school for the first time. Some came from as far away as West Jordan and Riverton. Others were from here in Layton.

We talked about ways to prepare for the new school year – one member described how she just showed her daughter’s kindergarten class the Alexander the Elephant food allergy video from FAAN (Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network), which helps explain the seriousness of food allergies to kids.

We also discussed food allergy tables in the lunchroom, ways to minimize contact with peanut butter and milk on doorknobs and trashcans, and giving presentations to teachers.

From there, we ranged onto other topics that always seem to be seething just below the surface – why family members are often the hardest to convince that food allergies are both real and as serious as we say, how to fly in a plane full of peanuts, how you have to read labels EVERY TIME in case a manufacturing process or recipe changes, and how to cook when family members are allergic to drastically different things.

It was a lively discussion, and on that left us all with new ideas, new suggestions – and a few new worries. Of course, that’s the way life is. But it also left us looking forward to next month’s meeting, to seeing what new things we can share.

Last spring, I posted some tips for dealing with your child’s school. I’ll repeat them here, in the hopes that they help smooth the way for other parents this week. Good luck, and enjoy these remaining few days of summer. I know my son is.

1. Volunteer a lot, so the staff knows you and counts on you (not just for allergy issues). If the only time they see you is when there's a food allergy, then you may start feeling like they're whispering "Oh no, here she comes again." But if they see you as a "Gosh, what would we do without her" kind of volunteer, then the occasional food issue will be coming from a great mom who's making a reasonable request.

2. If someone else is already the class mom, or you can't volunteer for that position, tell the teacher you really need to attend all parties and field trips because of the food allergy. The teacher may want to let the other parents know that you'll be selected for all the special events because of the food allergy, so that they don't think the teacher is playing favorites or something.

3. Ask the principal if there are other food allergic kids in the same grade, and if they can be assigned to the same teacher. That makes it easier for the allergic parents to trade off field-trip and party chaperone duties, it puts all the kids in the same class so that the classroom can be more allergen-free, and gives you some backup in food issues. (It's nice to NOT be the only one.) Statistically, about one in twenty kids has a food allergy, so chances are good there will be more kids than just your child.

4. Volunteer to shop for all the snacks or food materials for classroom parties or food educational units (like making noodle necklaces or gingerbread houses, etc.). Tell the teacher if she'll collect money donations, you'll go buy all the ingredients. They're usually delighted to get out of having to shop.

5. Make several copies of your Food Allergy Action Plan (see FAAN’s website) and ask to hang one in the office, the cafeteria kitchen, and the classroom, so that your child's photo and "What to do in case of a reaction" instructions are handy no matter where he is.

6. Practice with your child what he should do if he "feels funny." Role-play and pretend you're the teacher, and have him come up and tell you what's wrong. Often our kids are too shy about asking for help, so have him practice with you, and with the teacher if possible. Not only does that give your child words to use if something happens, but it helps impress upon the teacher how important it is.

7. I get on my principal's staff meeting agenda at the first of the year and give a 5-minute talk about allergies and demonstrate the EpiPen. I also give a presentation to my son's class, and all the teachers and aides he comes into contact with. If you're not comfortable doing this, ask if there are other allergic parents that you can contact. Talk to them about ways to teach the teachers -- maybe another mom would be willing to give the presentation if you make the photocopies. It's easier when there are two of you involved!

8. Remember, In Utah, your child can legally carry his EpiPen. But he probably can't administer it to himself in an emergency, so make sure the teachers and everyone else know where it is and how to use it. My son carries his in his backpack so that it's always in the classroom, and I also fill a second prescription and they keep it in the office. So he has two sets at school.

9. If he's going to be having lunch at school, talk to the Lunch Lady and cafeteria monitor. Introduce your child, tell her what your child is allergic to, and let your child know that the Lunch Lady is a friend that will help keep him safe. Then remember the Lunch Lady and the cafeteria monitor on holidays with little thank you cards or gifts to show you appreciate them. Few people do that. But it will help keep your child's food issues fresh in their mind, and they'll get to know him well.

10. Ask about setting up a food table just for allergic kids. All that’s required is a table with a sign that says allergies only, and the cafeteria monitors clean it with a separate marked bucket and cloth. Don’t let them make your child eat in a separate room or the principal’s office. He shouldn’t be punished just because he’s allergic to some foods! Ask the principal to mention the allergy table in a newsletter or other information that goes home with kids at the beginning of the year. You may find other kids with allergies expressing an interest in sitting at the table if they know it’s available.

11. Ask the parents of your child’s friends to send safe lunches with them every once in a while, so they can eat with your child. Make it a fun place to be!

12. Most peanut-allergic kids don’t react to the smell of peanut butter in the air, but a few do. If you are worried if your child will react to the air in the cafeteria, ask to take him in for a “practice run” right now. Sit in the cafeteria for half an hour and see if he reacts. If he doesn’t, cross that worry off your list.

13. Eat lunch with him for the first few days. That will reassure both of you that you can both handle this!

14. Talk to the teacher about which cafeteria door your child should use to avoid peanut butter contact (usually the one furthest from the playground), where to put his lunch bag after lunch, and where his EpiPens will be.

15. Remind your child NOT to throw away his lunch trash. Tell him to bring it home in his lunch bag, so that he can avoid using the trash can. If another kid slam-dunks a half-full milk carton in the trash can, you don’t want your milk-allergic child to get splashed.

16. Be aware and be prepared, but don't panic! School is going to be a lot of fun, and your child will do just fine. And believe it or not, so will you!

The Olympic Hero in Every Mom

2008-08-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

When we are young, we think we are strong. We feel immortal. We feel powerful. We feel limitless and chosen.

Then we have a child. Suddenly, we are reduced to bumbling, stupid weaklings. It takes every ounce of strength we thought we had just to make it through another sleepless night. When our baby cries, we cry, undone by the helplessness of not knowing why he’s crying. We despair, thinking our parenting skills inadequate to raising a child capable of thriving in a suddenly dangerous world.

When our child is sick, we grow sick with worry. When our child stumbles, our soul is bruised. When our child’s heart breaks over some perceived injustice, our heart shatters.

I never knew how weak I was until I had a child.

Last night, I was watching the Olympics like several million other human beings on this planet (and probably a few on the international space station), and I saw one of those pithy little overly sentimental profiles that they run periodically to give a “human interest” angle to some of the athletes. The profile introduced us to Oksana Chusovitina.

My definition of strength changed in the course of a few minutes.

Oksana Chusovitina is a gymnast. She’s in her fifth Olympics. She’s 33. She’s more than twice the age of most of her competitors. And she’s a mom of a boy who has fought leukemia.

And she nailed that vault. Twice.

The fact that she’s been competing for 20 years in a sport that exacts so high a physical price that most competitors peak at the age of 17 or 18 is impressive. That alone deserves high praise. To keep her body performing at that level for decade after decade is truly a Herculean feat.

The fact that she’s competed for three different countries (the Unified—formerly Soviet—team, Uzbekistan, and now Germany), during her Olympic career is incredible.

The fact that she’s able to put up with all those squabbling, giggling, petty teenagers surrounding her for so many years is commendable.

The fact that she was able to continue that grueling training and get her body back into competing shape after she had a baby is practically miraculous (as all of us who have struggled to lose those extra baby fat pounds know).

But it all pales when you learn that when she discovered her child had leukemia, her world turned upside down. Faced with a lack of cancer hospitals in her home country of Uzbekistan, she made a life-altering choice. She called a gymnastics acquaintance in Germany and asked for help.

Most of us don’t like to ask for help. Ever. We’ll tie ourselves into pretzels before ever asking anyone else to hold the door for us as we wrestle with 6 bags of groceries. We think it’s a sign of weakness to ask anyone for help. And we want to think of ourselves as strong, of course.

But Oksana asked for help. And the head coaches of a gymnastics club in Cologne, Germany, gave it to her. She moved to Germany where her son began cancer treatment, and she began training with the German club. Because of residency requirements, she couldn’t compete for Germany for three years, so she continued to compete for Uzbekistan while she trained in Germany, all while her son slowly recovered from his leukemia.

In 2006, she finally gained German citizenship, so this year she is a proud member of the German team. And her son, according to the profile last night, is healthy and pretty darn good at doing backbends, himself.

I wonder if Oksana would have retired from gymnastics by now if she’d had a healthy boy who didn’t need expensive, drastic cancer treatments. I’m sure she wouldn’t have uprooted her tiny family and moved to a completely different country, away from family, friends, and familiar routines. But the things we do to save our children are the things we do without thinking about them, without considering consequences to our own lives or bodies, without hesitation, and without fear.

When it comes to loving our children, we are fierce, and tireless, and strong beyond all measure.

Oksana won her first Olympic medal before any of her teammates were even born, and there’s a good chance she could win another one this week at the age of 33, but that isn’t want makes this woman strong. It’s that she had a child, and she makes herself strong to keep him strong.

Go Oksana. Grab that medal. Or not. Whether you win or lose, millions of us mothers feel a little stronger today because of you.

You’re everything an Olympic hero should be, and more: you’re a mom.

Guest Blogger Kim Martin: Our First Child-Free Vacation

2008-08-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that Kim Martin is one of my dearest friends, and one of her sons has food allergies and happens to be my son's best friend. Last week, Kim and her husband took a short vacation for the first time without their kids. (The kids thought it was great to have fun 4-day sleepovers with friends. My son thought having a brother for a few days was a blast!) I asked Kim if she'd like to blog about what it was like to spend some quality time with her husband for a change. Enjoy!

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This past week I did the unthinkable. For the first time in over ten years, I left my children behind and went on vacation with my neglected husband. We had never left the kids for many reasons (e.g., they would miss us, we would be miss them, and the biggest: who would safely feed our son who is allergic to milk, eggs, nuts, peanuts, seafood, sesame seeds, raw tomato and raw peaches). Now it seemed we had nothing to hold us back. The kids now ten, eight, and six, are old enough to understand that we will be back, we will call and talk to them, and we have amazing friends that understand food allergies and always have forethought about allergies when making decisions for our children. I was out of excuses!

My husband and I began out journey to San Diego at the Salt Lake City airport. We missed breakfast in our frantic attempt to return library books and rented movies before leaving town. We decided that before the flight we should grab a snack from one of the shops in the airport. We shared with each other that even though our son was not with us we needed to choose something nut-free out of respect for those flying with nut allergies. Oh, how our thinking has changed over the years!

We arrived in sunny California and went straight to Seaport Village. We set out for a lunch of seafood and a stroll along the beach with ice cream cones. It felt strange to eat and snack without reading ingredients or packing safe alternatives. We left food allergies behind for four days and three nights. Or did we? Yes, we could eat these foods and not worry about kissing our son and having a reaction, but our daily habits were to remain. We still found that we must wash our hands before touching things. After all, I would be returning home with the purse I carried with me to the restaurant. This had become our life and it’s a nice one. We don’t mind it. We just do it.

My husband and I talked of having “unsafe” food in our hotel room. Before food allergies we both loved nuts and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. We planned to visit the store and stock up on the contraband. I think we both thought we missed it more than we actually did, because we never went to the store. Sometimes we hear people in our life glamorize food and the taste and start to feel like maybe we are missing something. I found when given the choice we didn’t choose it anyway. These talks I give my kids about food and its use in nourishing the body, not to shove it into your body for taste, have found their way into my thinking, too. How interesting.

As a couple we spent our time focusing on each other. We found we weren’t missing anything from our previous life before food allergies (except energy and enough hours in the day).

It’s amazing to me what becomes important in life when faced with obstacles. For us, it’s our marriage, our three children, family, and having such amazing friends. These friends made it possible to go on vacation without even considering food allergies into the equation. Yes, we have had to overcome some big obstacles, but I feel like this is the happiest, luckiest, most amazing time of my life. I couldn’t ask for more.

It's a War Out There

2008-07-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

Most of us grow up thinking of food as a good thing. It’s healthy, tasty, comforting, expected, needed, depended on, craved, enjoyed, shared, loved. We never expect it to turn on us. But then, in the blink of an eye – or the pop of a hive, or the wheeze of a constricted airway – a once-benign food betrays us and we’re left reeling from the shock.

No longer our friendly companion, that food has suddenly become “the enemy.” We begin to see that, like any enemy, that food has infiltrated all corners of our lives. It lurks in every snack, every meal, every social gathering. Its insidious influence invades our schools, our entertainment, our church, our homes. We can no longer trust that our world is protected. This bad food has infiltrators – okay, so most people call them allergens – in every aspect of our lives, and we no longer feel safe. Our innocence disappears faster than a tax refund.

Discovering my son’s peanut and tree nut allergy was just this sort of betrayal. As for myself, my three favorite vices are potato chips, margaritas, and a good cup of coffee. Discovering that I have diabetes put a big dent in the first two, and an irregular heartbeat has just put the kibosh on the third one. Granted, all three were vices I’m probably better living without, but still, they were MY vices, I was kind of fond of them, and as vices go they certainly could have been worse. Why couldn’t I have suddenly developed an allergic reaction to, say, cleaning toilets or a health condition that could only be cured by moving to a tropical paradise? No such luck.

It takes a long time to build up our defenses after they’ve been breached by a double-crossing food. We have to teach ourselves new ways to cook. We must retrain our families to live without foods they’ve trusted all their lives. We put our allergic kids through food training boot-camp, trying to convince them that they have to give up foods they used to love, so that they can once again be safe. We build an arsenal of new recipes and EpiPens.

It often feels like a silent war we’re waging. From the outside, perhaps we look fairly normal and in control of our lives. But within the borders of our hearts, we know the battles we’re waging and the victories we count (and the losses we try not to).

With time, patience, and determination, each of us eventually reduces our all-out war to a peaceful truce – where we secure a safe home and some trusted allies in the form of friends, family, and schools. We still might find ourselves with the occasional border skirmish on our hands, but over all, we come to understand the enemy, find ways to limit its affect on us, and build healthier lives without it.

And while we must always remain on guard against our new food enemy, eventually we make our worlds secure enough that once again we can turn our attention to the more fulfilling parts of our lives, like enjoying a soccer game without fuming over the post-game snacks, or watching a great movie without mindlessly downing a giant tub of popcorn, or enjoying all the fun of a birthday party without pining for a slice of refined-sugar, fat-laden, cardboard-tasting birthday cake.

In short, we get to “make life, not war.”

This week is my blog’s anniversary. I started writing this weekly blog one year ago, and it’s been an eye-opening, fulfilling year. I’ve learned a lot about food allergies, and shared a lot with all of you who read this each week. Thanks!

Here’s to another year in the trenches with you.

Allergy-Safe Camping

2008-07-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago, I was dirty, sunburned, covered in eau de bug spray that only marginally worked, bathed in wood smoke, blinking ash out of my eyes, and engaged in competitive mosquito-slapping.

It was great! I was, of course, camping.

It was our second annual camping trip with a group of close friends – five families, for a total of ten kids and ten grown-ups. The kids range in age from 4 to almost 11, and they’ve all grown up together, so they’re a noisy, close-knit bunch that play at full-tilt from the time they rise until they begin to drop off around the campfire as the moon gleams and the parents laugh at old stories.

We spent two nights by a picturesque lake under towering pines on the north slope of the Uintas. The days were blue-sky gorgeous, and the nights were star-spangled and frosty cold. Camping in Utah is a joy, made better when you can split the cooking duties with other people.

We arrived Friday afternoon and left Sunday mid-day, so that meant we had five meals to deal with. After some complex mathematical calculations during our planning, we discovered that five meals divided by five families equals… let’s see, one meal per family, right? Yep. We’re purty smart.

So each family planned and prepared a single meal for the whole gang of twenty, and it made everyone’s weekend that much easier.

Because we have two allergic kids in the bunch, we make sure all meals and snacks are safe for them. The last thing we want is a life-threatening food reaction when we’re hours from the nearest hospital, so we simply ban all of their allergens from the entire campsite. All food the five families bring is free of milk, eggs, nuts, peanuts, and seafood.

Too restrictive? Not hardly. We ate like royalty!

Friday night was Susan’s fantastic kalua pork, rice, and salad, followed by a cherry chocolate birthday cake that was sinfully good.

Saturday morning was Necia’s fruit and cinnamon rolls on a stick, grilled over the open fire, along with bacon and breakfast cookies. When is breakfast ever that fun?

Lunch was a feast of Lorie’s delectable chicken salad and a smorgasbord of sandwich fixins on a variety of breads and tortillas.

For supper, Kim’s hobo dinners of beef, potatoes, green beans, and carrots all roasted in foil pouches over the campfire were delicious and really hit the spot after a hard day of fishing and Frisbee. And the roasted corn-on-the-cob was a first-of-the-season treat. Garlic bread was the finishing touch.

Sunday’s breakfast was my assignment, so I brought a variety of muffins – blueberry, chocolate chip, banana, and carrot cake – which I’d baked a few days earlier and frozen so they’d survive the trip. I also provided apple slices with Sunbutter for dipping.

All of those meals were completely free of milk, eggs, nuts, and seafood, but anyone who might have joined us would have never guessed. It was all delicious and nutritious, and there was plenty of it!

This group of friends has been close for seven or eight years now, so we’ve had a long time to get used to dealing with allergies and a long time to find delicious recipes. Each time we get together, it becomes a game for us moms to try out new concoctions. It’s fun, and nine times out of ten, it’s successful. (My chocolate chip muffins were a little too dense, but my carrot cake was a hit!)

Having food allergies hasn’t meant giving up on parties and get-togethers. It has meant we’ve come to appreciate this circle of friends (and more) who accept food allergies as a normal part of life, and who are infinitely willing to change their own cooking and eating habits for us. That is TRUE friendship.

We’re already planning next year’s camping trip, and I’m already coming up with some new muffin recipes to try. It’s the least I can do to thank these wonderful friends.

Changing Our Kids’ Eating Habits

2008-07-14T14:19:00.000-07:00

Almost every month, a new person finds their way to our Davis County UFAN meetings. Often they or their children are newly diagnosed, and they’re struggling to find a way to ease this transition into thinking about food in a whole new way. We welcomed just such a mom to our group last week, so our discussion revolved around ways to help her five-year-old daughter learn to change her eating habits.

Teaching a child to avoid certain foods is hard. Doing it when that child is old enough to have already developed a taste for those foods is even harder.

Unfortunately, food allergies can develop at any time. (I became allergic to barley and avocado in my 20s.) In some ways, it may be easier to have your child’s allergies appear when they’re very young, before they learn to love fudge, or popcorn shrimp, or ice cream. Although there are safe versions of most foods, the tastes aren’t always the same, and it’s hard to get a six-year-old to understand why he can’t have the ice cream at Baskin Robbins now, when he could last month. But if he’s grown up knowing only the taste of soy ice cream, he doesn’t have that problem.

So when you’re faced with teaching an older child that managing her food allergies means giving up some of her favorite foods, it can be an uphill climb.

Some kids are so tired of being sick or miserable from symptoms like eczema, vomiting, or hives that they’re willing to give up those foods to feel better. But some kids really can’t seem to associate the bad reactions later with the yummy taste now. All they can focus on is the instant gratification – what happens later, even if it’s only ten minutes from now, doesn’t concern them. We have to be concerned for them and take on the role of food cop. And they don’t like it one bit. (Neither do we, frankly.)

Once again, we find that this parenting gig is hard. I know, I know, big surprise.

Of course, we’re not alone. Lots of parents face challenges when it comes to food, regardless of whether allergies are involved. It’s our job to teach our kids healthy eating habits. (And that’s made even more difficult when our own habits aren’t that great!)

We have to teach them why they can’t eat candy for breakfast. Why they can’t eat six popsicles in a single sitting. Why they have to eat at least one serving of veggies with their hot dog. Why they can’t eat the entire bag of Oreos right before dinner.

We try to teach about the food pyramid, or at least the four basic food groups (I never have gotten the hang of that pyramid). We teach portion size. We teach concepts like balanced meals, healthy choices, and why fiber helps them poop.

Then after all that teaching, we still find ourselves arguing over every bite of green veggie, every pilfered lollipop, every suspiciously empty wrapper.

It’s just another of those less-than-fun aspects of parenting we signed on for when we brought home that little bundle of joy. So our issue is teaching why food allergens make that brownie off-limits. The next parent is dealing with an empty Twizzler bag under the bed of their overweight child, or a meltdown over a can of soda with their diabetic kid, or the pizza party for the child in a kosher or vegan family.

We all have food issues, I guess. And what works for one child seldom works for the next, so it’s difficult to offer advice. Tricks and bribes, rewards and consequences, explanations and threats – we probably try ’em all at least once, with varying success. The only constants are vigilance and time. We talk ourselves blue, pull out our hair, and wring our hands to shreds because we have to. It’s our job, and we do it in the hopes that someday our kids will get to the point where they can manage their food issues themselves, competently and confidently (and maybe even better than we manage our own, if we're honest with ourselves!). And believe it or not, most of them really do get there.

So what can we parents do for each other? Offer support, encouragement, ideas, and cheers – the things we never get from those very kids we’re trying to help, but that make us feel a little better when coming from other parents sharing our dilemma.

Together, we’re that much stronger.

Being Allergic to Aluminum Stinks

2008-07-07T14:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve spent the last week looking for my deodorant in all my usual stores. It’s not there. I’m afraid it’s gone for good.

I’m frustrated. I’m irritated. And in a few weeks when my last stick runs out, I’ll be smelly, too.

It stinks when you find a product you depend on, and suddenly either the stores stop selling it or the manufacturer stops making it.

I’m allergic to some metals, including aluminum. That makes it impossible for me to use antiperspirants, because they use an aluminum salt to work. I can wear deodorants that don’t include an antiperspirant, but all they seem to do is apply a little chemical-smelling perfume in an effort to out-smell the B.O. I’ve tried a bunch of them – including the infamous crystal – and none of them worked at all. It’s a sticky problem.

Then one sweet, happy day, I found an Adidas deodorant that uses something they call “Cotton-Tech.” Finally, something that works with my body chemistry! I love it. I depend on it. I can’t live without it. And now, I can’t find it. I can’t even locate a phone number to call to see if they still make it. Something’s rotten in the state of deodorants, I tell you.

This morning, I hunted online and found two online stores that appear to carry it. I guess I’ll have to pay a small fortune to have a dozen or so shipped to me, and I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the product arrives as advertised. If not, I’ll end up with a dozen sticks of something I can’t use. I worry that the shippers will substitute something they think looks similar. Do I smell a conspiracy? And I’ve learned that sometimes these stores are just getting rid of the remaining stock of a discontinued product, so this might be the end of my deodorant story. That’s the pits.

I wish stores had the flexibility to be more responsive to smaller groups of customers. There are a growing number of people who are trying to avoid aluminum now because of the suspected link to Alzheimer’s disease, and I’m sure I’m not the only person allergic to aluminum. I know that’s why Adidas gave this aluminum-free deodorant a chance. But I guess we still aren’t big enough of a group to convince the marketing arm of Adidas that they should continue to support this product.

I realize that retail economies force stores to carry only products that fit the largest number of customers, and large manufacturers will only continue to produce products that sell to a giant target base. If they don’t catch a whiff of success on the first try, they are quick to pull the plug.

Food allergic people are, unfortunately, becoming a larger target audience every day, so slowly but surely we’re sniffing out a few new products and resources every year that cater to us. But those of us with metal allergies are still pretty small in number, so I guess I’ll just have to be patient and bide my time until stores cater to me again.

In the meantime, I plan to support those online retailers and hope I get what I order. And if I don’t, you might want to stand upwind.

Relaxing at the Arts Festival

2008-06-30T12:26:00.000-07:00

The Utah Arts Festival was this past weekend in Salt Lake City. On Saturday I went by myself, because I was speaking on a panel about the “writerly life” sponsored by the SLCC Community Writing Center. But Sunday was even more fun, because that’s when I took my son.

My son and I love to go to arts festival – we wander through the booths, looking at paintings, photography, pottery, and sculptures. We laugh at the funny things we see (and the funny people). We hit the Maui Wowi stand for an icy fruit smoothie. We listen to music. We pick out the things we’d buy if we were rich, like that really cool inlaid wood coffee table that was in three curvy triangular sections that could be pulled out into separate tables. Yeah, definitely that. And maybe that glass vase in shades of gold and turquoise. And the earrings with the silver doodads for me. And for my son, the garden sculpture made from an old army helmet that looked like a little creature driving a tank.

We stopped to listen to a guy playing a Chapman Stick – a stringed instrument that kind of combines both a guitar and a bass. We wandered through the children’s art yard, even though my son is getting a tad too big for the activities. He still liked playing the large variety of musical instruments from around the world that were set out for kids to try – especially the Chinese gong, which he whacked with great zeal. OK, I admit it. I tried it, too. I had never banged a real gong before, and really, that’s something you should definitely do before you die, right?

So we had a great time, just the two of us. (Dad’s on a business trip, so he missed out.)

At arts festivals like this, food is always ubiquitous. There are lots of food stands with culinary choices ranging from Thai food to Navajo tacos, pizza to crepes, Greek souvlaki to grilled corn on the cob. Usually, those food booths are clustered in just one area, which makes it easy to avoid. But for some reason, those cinnamon-roasted almond stands get scattered throughout the fair. They smell wonderful, but they always make me nervous when I walk by them.

This year, I noticed a nonprofit group was raising money by selling PB&J sandwiches and cold milk for $2. They had a booth in the food area, but they also hit upon an even more enterprising idea – they had a guy pulling a little wagon through the festival, selling the sandwiches from his wagon.

As marketing goes, it’s a great idea. Get the kid food out to where the kids are melting down. What’s more brilliant than that? When my son’s blood sugar drops, he gets really whiney and argumentative. If we’re out somewhere and it’s been too long since he ate, I’ve found that a quick soda (even though I’m not a big soda fan) is a great antidote to his downward-spirally attitude. He becomes a new kid almost instantly. So bringing PB&Js out to the masses is a great idea. I bet it saved a lot of temper tantrums this weekend.

But it still made me a little nervous to see that wagon driving around the booths. On the other hand, it only made me a LITTLE nervous. That’s when I realized how much my son is growing up. A few years ago, the sight of that wagon would have sent my heart pounding. But he’s old enough now, he’s not going to pick up a half-eaten sandwich off the ground and put it in his mouth. He’s not going to handle everything he sees. Of course, he did still pick up that gong mallet and strike a mighty blow with it. And who knows who handled that mallet before him?

But I realized that as he gets older, I’ve become much more relaxed in environments like the Arts Festival. I stay prepared, with his medicine and wet wipes handy. And I point out things like the roasted almond stand so that he’s aware of his environment and can take precautions. But it’s so nice to feel like we’re both watching out for him together, instead of me watching out for him, and him hell-bent on turning my hair gray.

So if you’re a parent of a toddler with allergies, take heart. It really does get easier as he gets older.

Of course, when he becomes a teenager, I’ll probably take that statement back. For a lot of reasons. But I’m not going to think about that just yet, okay?

Children’s Menus Are My Friends

2008-06-23T12:15:00.000-07:00

I don’t want my baby to grow up. And not just for the normal reasons, like hormones, teenage angst, driver’s license agonies, and dating.

No, my concern is much bigger: I don’t want him to stop ordering off the children’s menu.

Yep, that’s right. I’m that shallow.

I like that he’s still 9 and still content with mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, and burgers. That makes me happy—and not just because it only costs $5 (although that is certainly a nice bonus). My main problem is that once he starts ordering off the adult menu, it’s going to be a lot harder controlling the cross-contamination with nuts.

After all these years of navigating kids’ menus, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with where we can eat and what he can order. And the chance of cross-contamination is minimal – when they dump frozen nuggets onto a plate and microwave it, there’s a lot less chance that they will somehow mix with the walnut-vinaigrette dressing on the adult salad.

But now that he’s getting older and more adventurous in his eating habits (“Look, Mom, they have grilled shrimp!”), the possibility of his food coming into contact with nuts will begin to go up dramatically.

When he was really little, the only foods he ate were Cheerios, grapes, and chicken nuggets. Every night for a whole week in Hawaii when he was 2, I cooked chicken nuggets in the hotel microwave, cut them up, put them in a baggie, and took them with us to restaurants. He was happy with his baggie of chicken, and his dad and I dined on lovely restaurant fare in peace.

That was easy.

Now I realize that soon he’s not going to be satisfied with a hot dog from the children’s menu when he knows there’s a sirloin steak on the very next page. I guess I knew that this time would come eventually. It was too much to ask that he would go off to college with a box of baggies and a Costco bag of nuggets.

Last night, we went to a barbeque place for dinner, and I asked the server about the barbeque sauce, the meat, and all the places where nuts might be lurking. My son loves barbequed meat, so I knew I had to be prepared for him to tackle the adult side of the menu.

Then what does he do? Orders a bowl of mac and cheese.

Maybe I’ve got another year or two before my baby grows up, after all.

Hidden Allergens in Unexpected Places

2008-06-16T15:48:00.000-07:00

Last week, our Davis County Chapter of UFAN had our monthly meeting. As usually happens, our discussion bounced from topic to topic like a 6-year-old on a Skittles overdose. We tossed around ideas for dealing with nursery and preschool teachers who just can’t seem to grasp the concept of keeping unsafe snacks out of the reach of toddlers. We talked about how some parents of classmates will always forget and send in peanut butter no matter how many times they’re reminded. Then we talked about the unexpected places we’ve found food allergens.

I’ve been dealing with my son’s peanut and tree nut allergies for eight years now, but I still learn new things to worry about. The new danger I learned about at last week’s meeting? Top soil. Apparently, nut manufacturers have to do something with all those nut shells, so they grind them and mix them into top soil, potting soil, or even some fertilizers. I guess I never thought about what happens to all those shells. I’m all for recycling and conservation, but the thought of ground-up nut shells under my son’s feet makes me more than a little worried.

Here are some other unexpected places where our support group’s members have found food allergens, especially nuts, milk, and eggs:

• Body lotions, creams, and moisturizers
• Exfoliants
• Shampoos and conditioners
• Soap
• Shaving creams
• Makeup
• Nail polish fast-dry
• Household cleaners
• Toothpaste
• Dentist office toothpaste and polishes
• Vaccinations and shots (many are egg-based)
• Bird seed
• The sand in sand & water tables (often uses crushed nut shells)
• Livestock bedding
• Beanbags (including some beanbag chairs, hacky sacks, etc.)
• Ant traps and mousetraps
• Potpourris
• Scented candles

I found a similar, but even more comprehensive list, on the website for F.A.I.T.H., an Alabama-based food allergy group.

After you’ve lived with food allergies for a while, reading ingredients labels on grocery items becomes second nature. But Wednesday’s meeting reminded me that I have to remember to read labels on everything my son comes into contact with, not just the things he eats.

At Long Last, Summer!

2008-06-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

Ah, summer! School ended on the last day of May, so we’re officially one week into our summer break now. Is there any time of year more full of anticipation than the beginning of summer? Endless weeks of sunshine and adventure stretches before us like an untracked beach. And after a long, snowy winter and this cold, dreary spring, summer’s arrival is as welcome as a long-lost friend.

I know a lot of parents are already counting the days until school starts again, but I’m not one of them. Maybe it’s because my husband and I only have one kid, but I don’t dread having him home. In fact, I relish it! To hear other moms talk, perhaps I’m an aberration, but I actually enjoy spending time with my son the Whirlwind. He’s always finding ways to make me laugh.

We share a love of adventure, a sense of humor, and a hunger for new experiences, and summer is full of all of these. So I try to arrange my writing jobs so that I can spend as much time playing with him as possible.

We’re already had our first adventure of the summer – a trip to our family cabin on a lake in Wisconsin. (We just got back this morning at 2:00 am, in fact.) Although the weather was cool and cloudy, we still had plenty of fun visiting relatives and friends, fishing, hiking in the woods, and passing the evenings with puzzles, videos, and card games while watching sunsets over the water.

Now we’re back home and spending a few days with one of the Whirlwind’s cousins. Next up – a weekend in Colorado to visit more friends. Then it’s a couple of months of swim lessons, skateboarding, camping, field trips to museums and nature parks around the area, concerts, swimming, arts festivals, another cousin visit … and that’s just the stuff we know about. I’m sure there will also be birthday parties and picnics, sleepovers and movies, cookouts and fireworks.

It’s busy, but it’s all the stuff the makes life joyous instead of drudgery. I’ve got my bag packed with sunblock, water bottles, EpiPens, a camera, and a notebook, so I’m ready to make the most of these fleeting summer weeks. All too soon, August will be ending, that school bell will be ringing, and we’ll be thinking, “Where did the summer go?”

But I refuse to think about that now. At this moment, summer’s here, I’m wiggling my toes in the sunshine, the Whirlwind is splashing in the pool with his cousin, and life is so very, very good.

A Bully’s New Weapon

2008-05-31T12:37:00.000-07:00

I’m heading out on vacation in an hour, so I’m posting this week’s blog a little early…

Last week, I mentioned that one of my worries is that someday a bully might try to harm my son by smearing peanut butter on him in school. That’s not a worry I just made up. Just a few weeks ago, a teen student in Kentucky was charged with a felony after putting peanut butter cookie crumbs into another student’s lunch box with the intent to harm him.

In other cases, children have actually smeared peanut butter on allergic kids, threatened to smear them, or threatened to force peanut products into their mouths. A couple of years ago, a student threatened to hold his teacher down and force a Nutter Butter down her throat.

It’s not that these bullies are worse than other bullies. It’s simply that they’ve found a new addition to the typical bully arsenal of physical and emotional weapons. (See this article from Canada, for examples of this bold new world of bullyism.)

The blog world is a-buzz with this latest cookie crumb case and other stories like it. Here are just a few interesting posts worth checking out, including one from Rush Limbaugh. (Yes, every once in a while, planets align in mysterious ways, and in this particular case, Rush and I actually agree on something.)

MomLogic (a mom talks about how both of her allergic kids have been "peanut bullied" at school)

Peanut Free Mama (readers comment on whether they think the felony charge is too harsh)

Rush Limbaugh (Transcript of a phone call where he responds to a woman asking his opinion of the “craziness of the nut allergy people)

Kids Food Allergies Blog (a parent discusses the contrast between Rush Limbaugh’s take and the patently absurd Harper’s article which tries to dismiss peanut allergies as a national hysteria instead of a medical reality – which makes me so angry I can’t talk about it right now… stay tuned for a future blog entry on that)

It’s easy to get emotional about bullying. It’s an age-old problem, and one that will never go away, because human beings are human beings, and that means someone will always be trying to find ways to feel powerful over someone else. It’s unfortunate that they’ve found a new weapon, but it isn’t surprising. Bullies can be just as creative as the next guy. Too bad they can’t channel their ambitions in a more positive manner.

This does mean that we, as parents of allergic kids, have one more thing to teach our children about when it comes to facing bullies in the school. Same problem, different variation. But we can do it, and our kids are strong.

Do I Worry? Duh!

2008-05-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

Natalie Williams, a pediatric psychology resident at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, is conducting an Internet-based survey to learn more about the challenges faced by parents of children with food allergies. The survey asks questions about parenting issues, parent worries and concerns, and child emotions and behaviors. She’s asking everyone who is a primary caregiver of a food-allergic child to take her survey so she can help develop the body of knowledge about how food allergies affect the daily lives of children and their parents. (Do take the survey. It’s here.)

I just participated in the survey, and it was interesting to see the types of questions being asked. Sometimes, however, I wasn’t sure how to answer a question. For example, I was supposed to indicate if “I worry about my child’s future,” and the choices were “Never,” “Sometimes,” and “Often.”

The thing is, I do worry about my child’s future, but not usually in relation with his food allergies. I worry about his ability to control his rambunctious, high-energy, emotional approach to life so that he fits in a little better with his colleagues when he enters the workforce. I worry that he’ll inherit a world polluted beyond the limits of human health. I worry that he’ll lose his fascination with science and sports and end up being sucked into the black hole of video games when I no longer have control of his schedule. I worry that a girl will break his heart. I worry that he’ll be lured in by drugs. I worry that he’ll be lured in by a religious cult. I worry that he’ll be lured in by a traveling circus.

I look at the world he’s growing up in, and I am wracked with concern that the America I love is becoming the laughing-stock of the world because we’ve lost sight of some fundamental human values like acceptance, charity, education, and support, and replaced them with political charades like intolerance, greed, territorialism, and prejudice. I worry that we’ve become a society more interested in which big-bosomed gold-digger marries the jerk on some reality TV show than in whether or not the majority of Americans can afford basic health care. I worry that I’ll be hit by a bus and won’t be there to help guide him to adulthood. I worry that he’ll get his feelings hurt at school.

I worry that he won’t be able to get a scholarship to college, and that the amount of money I have managed to save for his college so far won’t buy him a venti latte at Starbucks when he finally gets to campus. I worry that he won’t make the high school soccer team, even though he’s only in third grade right now. I worry that the city of Venice may sink into the sea before the dollar strengthens enough so that I can take my son there to see it. I worry that he’ll get nibbled by a barracuda the next time he goes snorkeling. I worry that his hormones are about to kick in, and I’m not going to be a patient enough mom to handle that. I worry that he’ll want to buy a motorcycle someday.

And yes, I worry that he’ll eat something with nuts in it someday and have a bad reaction before help arrives. I worry that before too long, he’ll be out of my reach, and traveling through hazelnut-infested countries without me. I worry that he’ll kiss a girl who’s eaten a peanut butter cookie. I worry that his kids might someday have even worse food allergies than him. I worry that he’ll make a student mad at school someday, and that kid will smear peanut butter on him to get even. Of course, I also worry that the angry kid will skip the peanut butter smearing and just haul off and paste my son with a mean left hook. Kids find ways to hurt each other, and the weapons change to suit the moment.

So there are a lot of reasons why I worry about his future. Only some of them are food-allergy related. Most of them are typical parent worries, and I think most parents lie awake at night dreaming up disasters we have no business dreaming up. My dad said his grandmother used to lie awake at night worrying that someday her husband might want to move the family to a ranch with an open cow tank, and maybe her kid would fall into it and drown. She would worry about this, even though they weren’t moving and had no plans to move. And I thought I worried unnecessarily.

It will be interesting to see the results of this survey. I wonder if we food-allergy parents really worry more than other parents, or if we all worry the same amount and just have a few variations based on our own particular circumstances.

I wish I didn’t worry quite so much. But when they handed me that adorable little caterwauling bundle of joy at the hospital nine and a half years ago, the doctor said, “Congratulations, it’s a boy. And along with him, here’s your bag of worries, your box of obsessions, your knapsack of fears, and your suitcase of paranoia. Enjoy him!”

And I do enjoy him, despite all the worries. He’s worth every moment of it.

Getting Creative with School Substitutions

2008-05-19T16:35:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was up ‘til midnight making chocolate bars. My son’s science teacher decided that since it was finally going to be sunny today (is spring finally here?), she wanted to make solar-powered mini ovens and let the kids make Solar S’mores. So she asked my friend Kim (mother of my son’s best friend) if she could get safe supplies. Kim handled the graham crackers and marshmallows, and I handled the chocolate bars.

Fortunately, Hershey’s developed a recipe for their Special Dark Chocolate Bark for people who are allergic to milk. We’ve made it and used it before in S’mores, and it works wonderfully. (See below for the recipe.)

At the beginning of every school year, Kim and I tell the teachers that we can find safe substitutes (milk-, egg-, and nut-free) for just about anything they ever need for any classroom activity, treat, project, or celebration. Most of the time, the substitutions are pretty easy – to make gingerbread houses, we used safe graham crackers, safe frosting, safe gumdrops, and other safe candies. You want to have hot dogs? We can find safe hot dogs and buns. Candy for a candy cannon? We’re all over that, with Starbursts and Skittles. Need safe paella for the third grade program – just use chicken instead of crab, and Swanson’s chicken broth instead of bullion cubes, and we’re good to go!

Every once in a while, we get to really stretch our creativity. A couple of weeks ago, a teacher asked us what to use instead of taffy to demonstrate metamorphic rocks. You should have been listening to the phone conversation between me and Kim. “Well, what exactly will the kids be doing to show metamorphic rock? Are they compressing it under heat? Are they changing its form from granular to crystal? Are they stretching it or folding it? Are they showing layers or texture?” We sounded pretty darn scientific. And we probably over-thought it, by a long shot.

But we came up with a bunch of different ideas for the teacher, from the putty you use to stick posters to the wall, to marshmallows, to slime. It turns out she just wanted the kids to stretch the stuff, so she went with our idea that most resembled her original request of taffy – Airheads candy.

We’re proud to say that in 4 years of school, we’ve yet to be stumped by a teacher’s request. When we can, we try to steer the teachers away from food products at all (instead of piñata candy, I found small toys and some old Mexican coins that the kids loved), just because we want to see less candy in schools as a general rule that has little to do with food allergies and more to do with healthy overall eating habits. But when food is really called for, we can supply that, too.

Sometimes it feels like a hassle, but it’s worth it to keep our kids (and other allergic kids) safe, and worth it to teach the teachers that there really are safe substitutions for all their favorite classroom activities.

And I have to admit, it’s kind of fun to be challenged to think in new ways. There’s something refreshingly creative about spending a few minutes brainstorming crazy ideas about what metamorphic rocks and Airheads have in common.

By the way, here is the recipe for the chocolate bark, from Hershey’s and the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN):

Hershey’s Special Dark Bark
Milk-free, Egg-free, Wheat-free, Peanut-free, Soy-free, Nut-free

1 (8-oz.) package of Hershey’s Unsweetened Baking Chocolate, broken into pieces
1/4 cup plus 1 tsp. shortening
1/8 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups confectioners sugar

Grease 9x9-inch pan. Set aside. In medium bowl, microwave chocolate and shortening on high for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, until mixture is melted and smooth when stirred. Add vanilla extract. Gradually stir in sugar. If mixture becomes too thick, knead with clean hands. Spread out in prepared pan. Cover tightly. Refrigerate until firm. Break into pieces. Store, well covered, in refrigerator.

Note: After changing the formulation on its Special Dark chocolate bar to include milk, Hershey’s developed this recipe for milk-allergic consumers.

My Recipe in Home & Heart Magazine

2008-05-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

Today marks the start of Food Allergy Awareness Week! All across the country, individuals and groups are finding ways to spread the word about the dangers of food allergies.

I’m especially excited this week, because the May issue of the magazine I manage, Home & Heart, goes on sale tomorrow (Tuesday, May 13) at newsstands everywhere. This issue’s theme is “gift-giving throughout the year.” In it, we spotlight gifts you can make and give for all sorts of fun little holidays, from Administrative Professional’s Day, to Chocolate Chip Day, to Talk Like a Pirate Day.

The best part is, I got to include Food Allergy Awareness Week as one of the gift-giving holidays, and I added my own recipe for “Mom’s Best Apple Bread.” It’s free of nuts, eggs, milk, and soy. To make it wheat-free, substitute your favorite flour blend.

So if you’re interested, look for the May issue of Home & Heart beginning tomorrow for lots of great crafty ideas for holidays throughout the year. And just to get you in the mood for Food Allergy Awareness Week, here’s my recipe from page 28. Enjoy!

Mom’s Best Apple Bread

2 c. flour (1 c. whole wheat and 1 c. white)
3/4 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 1/2 c. applesauce
1 - 1 1/2 c. apple, peeled and finely chopped
1/4 c. oil
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 Tbsp. white vinegar
1 1/2 Tbsp. apple juice or water

In large bowl, mix together the first six dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix the applesauce, chopped apple, and oil. In a large cup, mix together the remaining baking powder, vinegar, and apple juice or water. The mixture will foam rapidly. Pour it immediately into the apple mixture and mix well. Blend wet ingredients into dry ingredients.

Line a loaf pan with parchment paper and spray the paper with cooking oil. Add batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 – 55 minutes. Let the bread cool in the pan on a cooling rack for 10 – 15 minutes before removing from the pan. (You can cover the bread with a dish towel to keep it from drying out.)

Tip: For a delicious variation, add 1/2 c. raisins or dried cranberries to the apple mixture.

Snack Bars in Paradise

2008-05-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

A friend’s daughter is headed to Africa and Europe in a few weeks, for a summer’s worth of adventure. She’ll be visiting friends and relatives, as well as doing volunteer work while she’s there. She’s about twenty, full of energy and life and enthusiasm and joy.

And she’s allergic to a whole bunch of things. Her mom’s a tad worried.

But the best way to travel safely is to be prepared, so that’s exactly what the girl and her mom are doing. The mom asked me if I’d found any protein or snack bars that were free of nuts, milk, and eggs. I got on the UFAN forum and asked for recommendations, and everyone agreed that the Enjoy Life snack bars are tasty, and they’re free of all 8 of the “Top Ten” allergens. The mom went online that very night and ordered several boxes. (Click here for the Enjoy Life Foods website.)

When you’re traveling – especially in other countries – finding food without your allergens can be tricky. Sometimes you get lucky and find waiters who speak English, foods you trust, and markets that look reputable. Sometimes you don’t. So carrying your own food with you is essential. Even if you end up not needing it, it’s better to have it than wish you did. And it doesn’t really matter if it’s all that yummy or terribly balanced. You just need to survive for a few days or weeks, and you can do that on bottled water and snack bars if you have to. You can always get back onto a healthier diet when you return.

The other thing this mom and daughter are doing is finding translations for “I’m allergic to…” in all the languages where she’ll be traveling (which is a lot!). A great place for preprinted cards that can help you tell waiters what you’re allergic to, or ask someone to get you medical help fast, is www.SelectWisely.com. Their website has all kinds of helpful tips and resources, and preprinted cards in more languages than you can shake an EpiPen at.

Watching this friend of mine plan for her daughter’s vacation, I realize that it doesn’t matter how old and self-sufficient our children get. We will always worry about them and we will always do anything we can to keep them safe – even when they’re all grown up and heading to the other side of the planet.

I ordered some of the Enjoy Life snack bars myself, to let my son try them. He liked them, and took one in his lunchbox to school today. Someday, my son wants to travel to Japan. We travel a lot and have always had good luck wherever we’ve gone, but Japan makes me more nervous because we don’t speak even a jot of Japanese and I know they use a lot of peanut oils and nuts in their cooking. But even so, someday he may get there, and I know I’ll be just like this friend of mine – stocking up on safe snack bars and other suitcase-friendly foods that will turn his vacation from a trip through a land mine into the trip of his dreams.

I’ll have to do it. It’s in the mom handbook. I’ll be standing there in the airport with all the other moms, saying, “Have a nice trip! I love you! Here’s a snack bar!”

Flying Peanuts

2008-04-29T09:55:00.000-07:00

I was in Arizona this weekend with a couple of girlfriends. We had a blast – we let “spontaneity” be our theme word, so we let our whims guide us and had a great adventure, somehow cramming a little of everything into our trip.

Then, just to keep that “spontaneous” theme going, the airline decided to help by bumping us off our return flight. So instead of returning Sunday night as planned, we returned yesterday. It meant a few fast phone calls to sort out babysitting, lining up people to get our kids ready and off to school without us, and another phone call for a friend to come pick up my two companions at the airport so that I could drive directly to a Monday morning work meeting that I couldn’t miss.

But it all worked out surprisingly well, and we eventually made it home safe, sound, slightly sunburned, and recharged – and a day off-schedule, which explains why my blog is a day late this week. Oh well. Sometimes life just has its own agenda.

Anyway, the flights to and from Phoenix were short, but still long enough for the attendants to bring out beverages and snacks – your choice of crackers, cookies, or peanuts.

I continue to be surprised that airlines still serve peanuts. How can they do it, knowing that 11 million Americans suffer from food allergies, knowing that peanuts cause the most fatal allergic reactions of any foods, and knowing that they are trapping people in a giant flying can far away from medical help?

Sure, people who fly a lot know that they can call the airlines ahead of time and ask for a peanut-free flight. But that doesn’t help eliminate all the ground-in peanut crumbs in the carpet, on the arm rests, on the trays, in the seats, on the lavatory door handles, and everywhere else. And what about people who don’t fly regularly and don’t know they can call and request a peanut-free flight?

Watching them hand out peanuts made me nervous, even though my son wasn’t on the flight with me. It’s funny how sensitized I am to nuts now.

About three weeks ago, a friend of mine flew across country for work. She’s allergic to a few tree nuts, but she doesn’t usually worry about flights because she’s not allergic to peanuts. But on this particular flight, her colleague, who was sitting next to her, ordered a food tray from the attendant. The food tray contained fruit, pecans, cheese and crackers. He ate the fruit and nuts, but offered my friend the cheese and crackers. Not realizing there had been cross-contamination, she had one.

Quickly, she felt her throat closing up, and knew she was reacting. She grabbed some Benadryl and some water, but it continued to get worse. A few minutes later, she found herself waking up in the back of the plane, a doctor’s face bent over her, with a blood pressure cuff on her arm. Luckily, there was a doctor who responded when the attendants had asked passengers “Is there a doctor on the plane?” There was also someone who had an EpiPen, who offered it to the doctor.

They didn’t have to use the EpiPens – the Benadryl began to work, and the doctor was monitoring her blood pressure to make sure she didn’t go anaphylactic.

It’s our worse nightmare – to have an allergic reaction when you’re that far from a hospital. In her case, she was incredibly lucky and just happened to be flying on a flight with both a doctor and another allergic passenger armed with EpiPens. (The fact that there WAS another allergic passenger on the plane with EpiPens shows how prevalent food allergies really are.)

But it made me wonder how often reactions on airplanes happen, and why the attendants who have to deal with it put up with nuts on their flights (the edible kind, not the psycho passenger kind). If I were a flight attendant, I’d speak up and ask that my employer discontinue nuts, just so I’d eliminate a few more chances for things to go wrong on my flights. You can’t eliminate all possibilities of problems, of course, but why not eliminate the obvious and easy ones? In business, that’s called “picking the low-hanging fruit” – taking the obvious steps to increase chances for success.

My friend’s experience may not have taught the airlines anything, but it did remind her that she can’t let her guard down, even for a single snack. And it reminded me that even adults forget to be vigilante, let alone kids, so I have to continue to remind my son to be aware of his environment, not to take anything for granted, and to be responsible for his own life, no matter where we are.

Kindergarten and First Grade Jitters

2008-04-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

It’s spring! Yep, it’s that time of year when parents of 5-year-olds are registering their adorable little bundles of curiosity for kindergarten (or their 6-year-olds for first grade). It’s a crazy thought – that little bright-eyed toddler isn’t a toddler any more, and in fact is growing up right before our eyes! Look, there – another inch, another big word, another surprising utterance, another outgrown pair of shoes!

But then we take another look, and they’re still babies. So little, so dependent, so attached to Mommy (we hope), so ill-equipped to go out into that big, bad world. And when our little angels have severe food allergies, we find ourselves worrying even more.

My kindergarten angel is a third grade ruffian now, but kindergarten seems like just a heartbeat ago. I remember how worried I was when I filled out that registration form. What was I thinking, letting my sweet baby go into that wild jungle called “school”?

Well, here we are, wrapping up his fourth year in a public school, and we’ve both survived so far. Whew.

But because I know so many parents are going through those kindergarten and first grade registration jitters right now, I thought I’d offer up a list of suggestions for making the process of starting school a little easier. (For the parents, that is. The kids will have a blast. It’s us old folks that have all the problems.)

1. Volunteer a lot, so the staff knows you and counts on you (not just for allergy issues). If the only time they see you is when there's a food allergy, then you may start feeling like they're whispering "Oh no, here she comes again." But if they see you as a "Gosh, what would we do without her" kind of volunteer, then the occasional food issue will be coming from a great mom who's making a reasonable request.

2. If someone else is already the class mom, or you can't volunteer for that position, tell the teacher you really need to attend all parties and field trips because of the food allergy. The teacher may want to let the other parents know that you'll be selected for all the special events because of the food allergy, so that they don't think the teacher is playing favorites or something.

3. Ask the principal if there are other food allergic kids in the same grade, and if they can be assigned to the same teacher. That makes it easier for the allergic parents to trade off field-trip and party chaperone duties, it puts all the kids in the same class so that the classroom can be more allergen-free, and gives you some backup in food issues. (It's nice to NOT be the only one.) Statistically, about one in twenty kids has a food allergy, so chances are good there will be more kids than just your child.

4. Volunteer to shop for all the snacks or food materials for classroom parties or food educational units (like making noodle necklaces or gingerbread houses, etc.). Tell the teacher if she'll collect money donations, you'll go buy all the ingredients. They're usually delighted to get out of having to shop.

5. Make several copies of your Food Allergy Action Plan (see FAAN’s website here) and ask to hang one in the office, the cafeteria kitchen, and the classroom, so that your child's photo and "What to do in case of a reaction" instructions are handy no matter where he is.

6. Practice with your child what he should do if he "feels funny." Role-play and pretend you're the teacher, and have him come up and tell you what's wrong. Often our kids are too shy about asking for help, so have him practice with you, and with the teacher if possible. Not only does that give your child words to use if something happens, but it helps impress upon the teacher how important it is.

7. I get on my principal's staff meeting agenda at the first of the year and give a 5-minute talk about allergies and demonstrate the EpiPen. I also give a presentation to my son's class, and all the teachers and aides he comes into contact with. If you're not comfortable doing this, ask if there are other allergic parents that you can contact. Talk to them about ways to teach the teachers -- maybe another mom would be willing to give the presentation if you make the photocopies. It's easier when there are two of you involved!

8. Remember, In Utah, your child can legally carry his EpiPen. But he probably can't administer it to himself in an emergency, so make sure the teachers and everyone else know where it is and how to use it. My son carries his in his backpack so that it's always in the classroom, and I also fill a second prescription and they keep it in the office. So he has two sets at school.

9. If he's going to be having lunch at school, talk to the Lunch Lady and cafeteria monitor. Introduce your child, tell her what your child is allergic to, and let your child know that the Lunch Lady is a friend that will help keep him safe. Then remember the Lunch Lady and the cafeteria monitor on holidays with little thank you cards or gifts to show you appreciate them. Few people do that. But it will help keep your child's food issues fresh in their mind, and they'll get to know him well.

10. Ask about setting up a food table just for allergic kids. All that’s required is a table with a sign that says allergies only, and the cafeteria monitors clean it with a separate marked bucket and cloth. Don’t let them make your child eat in a separate room or the principal’s office. He shouldn’t be punished just because he’s allergic to some foods! Ask the principal to mention the allergy table in a newsletter or other information that goes home with kids at the beginning of the year. You may find other kids with allergies expressing an interest in sitting at the table if they know it’s available.

11. Ask the parents of your child’s friends to send safe lunches with them every once in a while, so they can eat with your child. Make it a fun place to be!

12. Most peanut-allergic kids don’t react to the smell of peanut butter in the air, but a few do. If you are worried if your child will react to the air in the cafeteria, ask to take him in for a “practice run” right now. Sit in the cafeteria for half an hour and see if he reacts. If he doesn’t, cross that worry off your list.

13. Eat lunch with him for the first few days. That will reassure both of you that you can both handle this!

14. Talk to the teacher about which cafeteria door your child should use to avoid peanut butter contact (usually the one furthest from the playground), where to put his lunch bag after lunch, and where his EpiPens will be.

15. Remind your child NOT to throw away his lunch trash. Tell him to bring it home in his lunch bag, so that he can avoid using the trash can. If another kid slam-dunks a half-full milk carton in the trash can, you don’t want your milk-allergic child to get splashed.

16. Be aware and be prepared, but don't panic! Kindergarten is going to be a lot of fun, and your child will do just fine. And believe it or not, so will you!

Friendly Faces in the Food Fight

2008-04-14T11:39:00.000-07:00

Last week, we had our April meeting of the Davis County chapter of UFAN. It was great – six new members joined us!

The most amazing transformation takes place at meetings like this. Often, when we first arrive, we come feeling like we’re the only ones dealing with food allergies. We’ve had a rough week, perhaps. Maybe we’ve had a conflict with an in-law, a teacher, a stranger, or a neighbor. We’ve dealt with a reaction. We’ve had to explain for the umpteenth time why our kid can’t have a piece of that birthday cake, and no, we’re not just overly protective. We’ve read approximately eighteen thousand labels, give or take a million, and we’ve heard another scary story about finding food allergens in unexpected places. (“What do you mean, my new exfoliating soap uses almond shells as the abrasive grit?!”) We’ve tried to explain to yet another 16-year-old waiter that there can be absolutely no cross-contamination with nuts in our kid’s meal.

We’re tired of feeling like Don Quixote tilting at windmills all day long. Talk about feeling isolated.

Then we walk into a meeting like a UFAN chapter meeting, or we run into another mom at a soccer game whose kid is allergic, or we stumble across another parent’s blog, and suddenly we connect! There’s someone else who’s dealing with this! There is someone else to nod and say, “Yeah, don’t you hate that.” Someone else who says, “Sure, I’ve got a great birthday cake recipe.” Someone else who suggests, “Have you tried telling your neighbors this?”

We all need a friendly shoulder sometimes. I’m blessed with many good, dear, wonderful friends who’ve been with me for years and are as committed to keeping my son safe as I am. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have tough days when that brick wall has left a really big imprint on my forehead. So a friendly face is always a welcome relief.

I’m so glad we have our Davis County chapter meetings, where we know we can see a bunch of friendly faces every month. At our meeting this month, we shared our own stories and struggles, as well as our successes and ideas. We learned, and commiserated, and cheered each other on. We even compiled a list of local restaurants where we’ve had some good experiences ordering food that accommodates our allergies (which I will give to Kay to post on our UFAN website)! I left the meeting re-energized and ready to fight the weekly battles again. Thank you to everyone who came!

Bring on those windmills!

Trace Adkins Raises His Voice for Food Allergy Awareness

2008-04-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Food allergy awareness has hit the Big Time! You probably know by now that Trace Adkins, country music star, was recently on The Celebrity Apprentice TV show, competing to win $250,000 to donate to the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN). What an incredible advance in awareness, over the course of just a few weeks.

Trace’s 6-year-old daughter has severe food allergies, and because of that, the singer has joined the millions of families struggling with food every day. But unlike most of us, Trace has the ability to turn his efforts into national campaigns raising hundreds of thousands of dollars! Although he lost to Piers Morgan in the last episode, he won the hearts and minds of millions of viewers. Everyone seems to agree that he showed uncommon integrity and values in a show (and genre) not necessarily known for rewarding good guys. To see a Celebrity Apprentice video clip of Trace explaining what it’s like to have a child with food allergies and why his chosen charity is FAAN, click here.

Just because the show is over doesn’t mean Trace has quit working for food allergy awareness, though. Trace is working with FAAN to raise money for research and awareness programs in several ways. If you’re a country music fan, you can help Trace raise money for FAAN by downloading a live recording of his hit single “You’re Gonna Miss This” from iTunes for only 99 cents. Proceeds from sales of the song go directly to FAAN, but hurry, because it ends April 10. To download the song, go here.

And finally, Trace will once again be the National Honorary Chair of FAAN’s Walk for Food Allergy this year. The first Walk in 2008 will be in Richmond, Virginia on May 3.

In the blog world, Trace is everywhere. The Allergy Notes blog has several videos related to Trace’s work on the Celebrity Apprentice. The CMT Lifestyles blog talks about Trace’s heartbreaking story. The CMT Country Music Blog has a lot of comments from readers that show how Trace really touched people’s hearts.

Trace will be performing in Wendover, Nevada on May 2. Members of the Utah Food Allergy Network (UFAN) are signing a poster to deliver to him, thanking him for all he’s done for food allergy awareness. If you want to be a part of that poster, just post your message to him as a comment on my blog, and I’ll make sure it gets to the right person.

Personally, I don’t listen to country music, and I’d never heard of Trace Adkins before all this started. Now, however, if anyone asks me who my favorite country singer is, I won’t hesitate to answer. Trace Adkins sounds pretty darned good to me.

Babysitting Food-Allergic Kids

2008-03-31T12:31:00.000-07:00

Every month, our Davis County chapter of UFAN meets and tackles a new topic. Our March meeting’s topic was Babysitting. Leaving your food-allergic child with a babysitter is a frightening thought. Will they understand how serious it is? Will they know what to do if the child gets into something they’re allergic to? Will they sneak harmful food into the house? Will they accidentally feed the child something bad?

One option is to never leave the child in the care of a babysitter. But is that the only solution? To help us find out, I invited three guests to our meeting: the instructor of the 6-week babysitting course taught at Davis Hospital, my own babysitter of several years, and a young girl who is just beginning her babysitting career and wanted to learn more about the care of food-allergic children.

Jan Staley, the babysitting course instructor, began our discussion by going over what she covers in her classes. Her perspective on food allergies is invaluable – her own niece and nephew have severe food allergies to a dizzying array of foods, and she has watched them grow up over the last twenty some-odd years. Her memories of watching those kids get rushed to the ER when they were visiting her family are still vivid. So when she teaches the course, she talks about food allergies and how serious they are.

Jan went through her course outline with us, and we discovered not only tips she gives the babysitters, but tips we parents can use when talking to our own babysitters. The course is extensive, ranging from basic growth and development issues for children at different ages, to making a babysitting kit, dealing with problems like crying and sleep patterns, fire safety (she even has firefighters give a presentation on how to prevent fire emergencies and how to handle one if it happens), poisons and first aid, Friends and Family CPR, and tasks like diapering, bathing, managing illness, bedtimes, and meals. We all were impressed and I would STRONGLY recommend that anyone who wants to babysit should take this course! Click here for the class schedule (next course starts May 14).

Then my babysitter talked about her experiences babysitting my son and his best friend, who are both allergic. She never had to deal with a reaction, because we told her (and her sisters, who have also babysat for us many times) about the allergies, explained the EpiPen and Benadryl, and showed her exactly which safe snacks and meals she could eat and offer to the kids. She said she was determined to NEVER have to use the EpiPen, so she goes to extra lengths to ensure she doesn’t cause a problem, including washing her hands (and sometimes even changing clothes) before she arrives.

Finally, the young babysitter just starting her career asked some questions and handed out flyers with her own contact info. She has known my son for years and has even had him at a few parties at her house, which her mother prepared safe foods for, so she’s grown up aware of food allergies and how serious they are. She is also in the generation of kids who have at least one food-allergic friend in every class, so it’s a concept that is normal to them, and something she and her generation are beginning to accept as a fact of life, not an abnormality.

Some of the most important tips we parents heard in the meeting were:

• Preplan meals for both the babysitter and the children. Meals should be cold, not cooked, so that the babysitter doesn’t have to use an oven or stove.

• Show the babysitter where the safe snacks are. Better yet, put them out on the counter and state “Only these snacks!” Make it clear that the babysitter can’t eat non-safe foods either, since he/she will be touching your children and their playthings.

• Show them where the phone is. If you don’t have a land-line phone, give the babysitter a cell phone so they can call you.

• Write down your own home address. If the babysitter has to call 911 from a cell phone, caller ID won’t show where she’s calling from, and if she doesn’t know your home address, precious moments can be lost while she hunts for mail or something that shows her where she is.

• Leave them your phone number, and also the phone number of an alternate contact who you know will be home.

• Tell the babysitter where you’ll meet her and the kids if she has to evacuate for a fire or other emergency.

• Leave a working flashlight beside the emergency phone number and address, in case there’s a power outage.

• Explain when and how to administer Benadryl and EpiPens.

• Leave a detailed note of bedtime routines – time to eat, time to bathe, time to read stories, time to watch TV or movie, time for lights-out. That prevents your children from wheedling or arguing for more.

• If you want to “try out” a babysitter, invite him/her over to watch the kids while you get something done inside the house. They have to take care of everything, but you are immediately available if there’s a problem. But leave them alone! If you hover, you won’t find out how they handle everything. Use the time to get caught up on scrapbooking, paperwork, some gardening, or whatever.

It was a great discussion, and we all learned some really helpful tips for leaving our food allergic kids with babysitters. More importantly, we learned it’s possible to do it safely and without panicking if we just take a little extra time to prepare and explain.

Hooray for St. Patrick's Day

2008-03-24T12:22:00.000-07:00

St. Patrick’s Day and Easter fell in the same week this year. One holiday has a lot to do with food – chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, hard-boiled eggs, marshmallow eggs, and other unnaturally colored confections are a huge part of Easter.

The other holiday, St. Patrick’s Day, has nothing to do with food. OK, technically green beer is a food, but I don’t know anyone who wakes up to a basketful of green beer, and I’ve never heard of St. Patrick hiding beer bottles in the grass for the kids to find. (Well, maybe some fraternities do that. It’s been a while since I’ve been to college.) Alright, and maybe there are a few people out there who actually cook corned beef and cabbage for dinner, but really – you have to admit, St. Pat’s food just isn’t worth getting that excited for.

And yet, St. Patrick’s Day is still fun – it’s all about wearing green clothes, pinching those who forgot, talking in silly accents, and playing Irish music (the louder, the better). Even my son’s school, which has a school uniform, let kids replace the uniform with something green on St. Patrick’s Day.

That got me thinking about holidays that aren’t closely associated with food. There aren’t many of them. Let’s see… Martin Luther King Jr.’s Day, April Fool’s Day, Earth Day, Arbor Day, Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day. That’s about it. And most of those we celebrate primarily with big sales at furniture stores.

Everything else is all about food – brunches, barbecues, cherry pies, candy, family feasts. We do love to celebrate the big things in life by eating, don’t we? It’s not the kind of thing you think about, unless you spend way too much time thinking about food to begin with. Like us allergy-concerned types.

So holidays and food are just an inseparable pairing we have to live with. It means each holiday has that extra bit of stress, that extra amount of work to cook from scratch, that extra expense to order the “safe” foods from online sources, that heightened worry as we venture into someone else’s home. It means holidays, already stressful to begin with, strain us that much more.

But for our kids’ sakes, we still find ways to have fun. We strive to make the day seem normal, effortless, and special. And often we think no one appreciates what we go through. But just now, I asked my son what I should say about Easter in my blog, and he said, “You can talk about how everything the Easter Bunny brought me was safe, just for me! I got safe chocolate bunnies, safe chocolate eggs, safe candy in my eggs, safe white chocolate chickies, and really fun toys!”

He DID notice. He DID appreciate it.

And suddenly it doesn’t seem like food-centric holidays are quite as bad, after all.

Of course, I’m still voting for St. Patrick’s Day as my favorite holiday of the year. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go put some Irish music in the CD player…

All the News That Fits Food Allergies

2008-03-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

My son and I were in the newspaper this week. (Click here to read the article.) Nope, we didn’t get caught embezzling money from a multinational conglomerate. Nope, we didn’t win the lottery. Nope, we didn’t take first place in “Dancing with the Stars.”

We made brownies.

Yep, pretty newsworthy stuff.

Back in November, a reporter from the Salt Lake Tribune came to our Davis County chapter of UFAN to see what we were all about. She interviewed several people from our chapter, and everyone let loose and told her exactly what it was like to live with food allergies in a food-obsessed society. We told her how we felt, how we dealt, and how we melt. We told her how scary it is to find out your child could die from eating a cookie. We explained how hard it is to convince your extended family that you aren’t making this up. We shared how thrilling it is to find a group of other food-allergic people to commiserate with, draw strength from, and cheer on.

Then she asked if she could come over to my house to photograph me and my son cooking something. “Sure!” I said, then ran home to throw everything in the closet. We were leaving for a vacation the next day, so I had suitcases lying on the floor, snorkel gear in the living room, maps and brochures scattered around the kitchen, and all the calm self-control of a hummingbird on crack.

But by the time she got there, I’d hidden most of the laundry, tossed the random piles of paper into the nearest drawer, and rooted through the pantry for brownie ingredients. Whew!

Sure, my house ALWAYS looks this neat. And sure, you can ALWAYS see my kitchen countertop. And sure, I ALWAYS look like June Cleaver. Want to see me vacuum in high heels and pearls? I do it all the time. And the last thing I do before leaving on vacation is bake a batch of egg-free, milk-free, and nut-free brownies. You betcha.

Journalism is, after all, pure truth on paper. Everyone knows that.

But the reporter didn’t care what my house looked like, of course. She was there because our food allergy support group was worth writing about. It’s worth letting people know that there’s a local resource for people who are learning to cook and eat without the foods that can harm them. It’s worth a little added pre-vacation chaos to show people that living with food allergies doesn’t mean living without joy.

So the reporter snapped photos while my son and I measured, mixed, poured, and giggled. She laughed as my son licked the beaters, because egg-free batter makes licking fun again. She smiled as he told her that being allergic was a “minor inconvenience” in his life.

A few days later, when I asked her how the article was coming, she said it was “writing itself” because the members of our chapter had given her such great information.

It took several months for the article to finally appear, simply because there is such a backlog of human-interest stories for the Davis County Close-Up section of the Tribune. But it finally appeared this week. So there we are, along with two other wonderful members of our chapter, sharing our stories and reaching out to other food-allergic people in Davis County.

And in one of those peculiar strokes of serendipity, the Tooele chapter of UFAN was in the Tooele Transcript Bulletin the week before. (Click here to read the article.)

My son thinks it’s pretty neat that he’s in the paper. He thinks it’s even better that other allergic kids might see the article and come to our support group.

And that’s what it’s all about. Not the brownies. Not the pre-vacation last-minute stress. Not the “glory” of seeing our names in print. Just the knowledge that we’re making another tiny step of progress towards making this world a little more food-allergy friendly.

Are Food Allergies Kosher?

2008-03-09T21:58:00.000-07:00

When you first learn that you or someone in your family has food allergies, grocery shopping suddenly becomes a much bigger challenge than you ever expected. Shopping trips take twice as long because you’re standing in the aisle reading every label. You’re rethinking all those recipes you’ve made for years. You’re dreaming up new ways to cook.

It’s overwhelming at first. Unless you are freakishly well-adjusted (and don’t talk to me if you are because I don’t want to know) you will go through every one of those infamous “five steps of grieving” – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Eventually (believe it or not), we all make it to that fifth step, acceptance. We are creatures of habit, so we simply begin to make new ones. After a while, we learn how to shop again. We rebuild a little repertoire of quick dinner recipes. We slowly restock our pantry with a new selection of snacks. We fall into a lunch routine. Grocery shopping becomes an ordinary activity with no-brainer purchases again.

So it’s really interesting when a new wrinkle gets tossed into the routine.

Last week, my oldest friend – wait, “oldest” is wrong (she’s a year younger than me)…I’d better start over. My “longest-enduring” friend came to visit me! We met in junior high school when I lived in Maryland. That was more decades ago than I really want to say out loud. Just before twelfth grade, I moved to Utah.

Despite the miles, we’ve stayed best friends, even though we’ve only seen each other in person once in the last eighteen years or so. So when a convention finally brought her out west last week, she finagled a 36-hour detour to Utah to come see me. It was wonderful, as if no years had passed – we picked up right where we left off, and never paused for a breath (so my husband says).

What made this quick visit a little more interesting is that in the decades since she last stayed with me, she began keeping kosher and I had a son with food allergies.

Some Jewish people keep kosher at sort of a nominal level. Others, like my friend, keep very strict kosher. It’s not possible to explain all the details of kosher cooking, but suffice it to say, I’m not Jewish so my kitchen isn’t even nominally kosher. Therefore, I can’t use my dishes, pans, utensils, or stove. So right away I know I’m going to have trouble feeding her, and I haven’t even set foot in a grocery store yet.

I called around to find out if Utah has a kosher restaurant. We don’t. We have a kosher caterer, but it was less than convenient and very expensive. More searching revealed a grocery store in Salt Lake City that actually has kosher sections marked. I went there and walked around. The good news was, I saw lots of kosher choices! The bad news was, it all needed to be cooked, and I didn’t know how we were going to do that if I couldn’t use my stove, oven, or grill. Our choices were going to be pretty limited. Then I picked up several packages and started reading labels to see if any of the kosher snacks and treats were nut-free. They weren’t.

Oy.

After about five packages, I got discouraged and went home. It felt like the old days, when I first learned I had to eliminate nuts from our food and it suddenly seemed like every single food item in the store was contaminated. I had almost forgotten that feeling. Now here I was, right back in “food is the enemy” territory again.

My friend had assured me that if came right down to it, she could survive on an apple and cottage cheese. But I wasn’t sure any of the cottage cheese in Utah would be kosher. I hoped my friend REALLY liked apples.

I picked her up at the airport and drove her directly to the grocery store with the kosher sections. She calmed me down and told me how we could clean and purify my microwave to make it kosher, or how if we really needed to, we could double-wrap a kosher pizza in aluminum foil to heat it in my oven. She showed me how to interpret the little kosher symbols. She found pretzels that were nut-free. We bought apples. We found kosher cottage cheese. We bought carrots and Cheerios and milk and bagels, all of it kosher, and all of it nut-free. We ate off paper plates and used plastic forks, and even discovered one sweet treat that both she and my son could share – Oreos.

Then the really amazing discovery -- we found a package of kosher Ramen noodles that appears to be egg-fee and milk-free, which will be great news for my son's best friend!

For both me and my friend, shopping for our own needs has become second-nature. Adding in the wrinkle of each other’s food issues ratcheted up the challenge, but we managed to work together to solve even that.

I have new-found respect for people with food allergies who also must keep kosher (or any other type of special diet). But human beings are pretty amazing. As overwhelming as it must seem at first, we all have to play the hand we’re dealt, so if that were my lot in life, I suppose I’d eventually get to the point where grocery shopping once again became a habit, and food became a routine instead of an enemy.

Thanks to my calm and unflappable best friend, I learned two things this week. Upping the challenge every once in a while is a good reminder to appreciate how far you’ve already come. And sometimes tackling new challenges brings rewards you weren’t expecting… like a simple little package of Ramen noodles.

Best Of: Phthalates, Matthew McConaughey, and Fish, Oh My!

2008-03-03T16:21:00.000-08:00

February, the month of 1000 days (none of which are pleasant) has officially ended, but it still feels like it can’t let go. Because I’m so unbelievably behind on all my various projects and deadlines, I’m going to run a “best of” blog entry today. So here is my blog entry from October 8, 2007. Enjoy it again!

I was reading an interesting book this week – Boys Adrift, by Leonard Sax. It describes what he considers the 5 factors that are contributing to the decline of the productive male in American society. Basically, he sees an epidemic of “slacker dudes” everywhere he looks – young men who have no ambition and no drive to do anything but play video games, live like parasites off their parents and/or girlfriends/wives, and indulge in online porn. He likens them to the Matthew McConaughey character in the movie Failure to Launch.

I read it with a degree of skepticism. I don’t know too many males living this life he describes. Most of the men I know are gainfully employed. Those that aren’t have chosen to be at-home dads, and they’re working hard at that role. They’re definitely not the slackers Dr. Sax is describing. But then again, most of the men I know are already well into their 30s or above. And none of them look like Matthew McConaughey. Maybe my sample is skewed.

However, as I talked to some friends this week, a couple of their younger brother-in-laws cropped up in the conversation, and they sounded suspiciously like the slacker dudes in the book. Hmmm.

While I don’t necessarily agree with everything the doctor was describing in his book, it made me think about some things I hadn’t really considered before. One of the 5 factors he describes is the unfortunate celebration of violence and law-breaking in video games – I agreed 100% with that one. But one factor I hadn’t ever heard of before was “endocrine disruptors.” Basically, he cites a bunch of studies that show that phthalates –chemicals in polycarbonate plastic used in things like bottles, plastic wrap, and baggies – are being blamed for mimicking estrogen, causing a drastic drop in men’s testosterone levels (among other things), and killing the ambition and drive that testosterone controls in men. I’m oversimplifying, of course, but you get the idea. He even cites studies that show one out of every three college-age men have sexual dysfunction now. One in three? Wow. That certainly wasn’t the case when I was in college!

Oddly enough, the estrogen-mimicking chemical seems to have the opposite affect in women – women seem to have more energy and drive to accomplish things than before, and their bodies are maturing at an earlier age.

He also reports that in some areas where phthalates are prominent in the water supply, such as the Potomac River, male fish are growing eggs instead of sperm and male animals are becoming feminized. As my son says, “Ewwey!”

So what has this got to do with food allergies? Maybe nothing. But this alarming decrease in men’s testosterone levels has been happening over the last couple of decades.

That got my attention. Food allergies have drastically increased over the last couple of decades, too.

And, coincidentally, the rate of autism has been increasing over those same couple of decades.

Nothing says these three things are related. But it kind of makes me wonder. Thirty or forty years ago, we didn’t use plastic in nearly as much food packaging. We didn’t have as many synthetic chemicals in foods. We didn’t lug pre-bottled water everywhere we went – we drank it out of glasses or metal thermoses. (On the other hand, we did use a lot more really nasty stuff like DDT and asbestos. So perhaps we’ve just traded poisons.)

Phthalates have made our lives more convenient. But maybe it’s changed our bodies in ways we’re just beginning to suspect.

During the Roman Empire, the Romans made amazing strides in civilization. Their forms of government, their art, their philosophy, and their architecture grew by leaps and bounds beyond anything that had come before. One of their incredible inventions that made city life so much more progressive, hygienic, and convenient was indoor plumbing. They ran water pipes throughout their cities, bringing fresh water to the populace and draining “used” water away. It was a phenomenal accomplishment.

The only problem was that the pipes they laid so precisely were made of lead.

Madness was an unexpected, and to the Romans inexplicable, side effect of convenience.

I can’t help but wonder if, in the name of convenience, we are now changing our environment in ways we don’t yet understand, introducing problems we don’t know how to fix, or affecting our society in ways we can’t recover from.

Great. Like I needed something new to worry about. Of course, I’m just grasping at straws and probably making mountains out of coincidence molehills. We’ve got years of studies ahead of us before we really find out what’s happening to cause all these food allergies. I would welcome some solid science right about now.

Oh well. I gotta run. I’m going shopping for a steel thermos.

Remembering to be Thankful

2008-02-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

Here it is, a week since I wrote about staying up at night with my son because of his illness, and today, I’m tempted to just write, “Ditto.”

I am so DONE with this virus. You know this virus. Chances are good you’ve had it in your family already. Fever, cough, headache, stomachache. And now a sore throat. We thought he was getting better at the end of last week, but it returned with a vengeance on Saturday. I took him back in to the doctor today to make sure he hadn’t gotten something on top of it, like strep throat or pneumonia, but nothing showed up. It’s just viral, which means all we can do is out-last it.

And that might be the trick, because I’ve got to tell you, cabin fever is getting nearly as bad as this virus. I want to get out of the house. Even going to the doctor this morning was a welcome change of scenery, never mind that we had to sit in a waiting room full of other sick kids.

The one-hour-per-day TV limit flies out the door when he’s sick. So I’ve endured an all-day “Mythbusters” marathon and an all-day “Dirty Jobs” marathon, punctuated with occasional “Smash Lab” episodes. Thank goodness for the Discovery Channel. These shows let my son watch stuff blow up instead of doing it himself. I tell myself he’s learning lots of math and science, too, which is good since he keeps missing school because of this bug.

He’s not the only one. Eight kids were missing from his class last Tuesday (out of 25).

Supposedly, there are two different things going around – an influenza strain that’s different than what they vaccinated everyone for, and this virus (and possibly multiple strains of it). Everyone is sick, everyone is inconvenienced, everyone is annoyed.

But fortunately, very few people have died. And I think we’re forgetting to be grateful for that.

Just 90 years ago, in 1918 and 1919, an influenza outbreak killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million people worldwide. That’s more people than were lost in all of World War I. That’s more people than were killed by the Bubonic Plague in the 1300s.

28% of all Americans were afflicted with that flu, and it was incredibly scary. My grandmother’s favorite aunt died from it.

That was only 90 years ago. Yet somehow, almost no one seems to remember it today, even though most of us know people who were alive then. So now, this flu and viral stuff is going around, and we’re all annoyed and talking about it, but no one is terrified of it, like they would have been 90 years ago.

That says a lot for how much medical science has changed in 90 years. And it says even more about how our lives have changed because of that medical science. Despite all the news about bird flu danger and drug-resistant bacteria and mutant viruses, we have so much confidence in our medicines and doctors that we just aren’t all that worried.

So we hit WalMart and stock up on ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and cough drops. We make chicken soup. We call in sick for a few days. We watch TV and complain for a while, and then we continue on with our lives.

We aren’t planning funerals and boiling everything in sight and putting quarantine signs in our windows. We aren’t wondering how to piece our lives together after losing loved ones to this epidemic. Instead, we’re wondering who’s going to drive the carpool tomorrow and how to get missed homework.

I’m trying to remember not to take all of this for granted. I’m so grateful that my biggest worry today is that I’ve got a little cabin fever and my son has missed another day of school. I’m so glad we’ve gotten nine more decades of science under our belts since then, and I’m thankful for all the scientists and doctors who’ve made it their lives’ work to try to prevent another pandemic like the Spanish flu.

I’m so grateful we are living in 2008.

Love in the Time of Fever

2008-02-18T11:20:00.000-08:00

My horoscope today says something about being especially energetic and feeling like cleaning the whole house.

Yeah, right.

If ever there were an example to prove that horoscopes are hooey, today’s would be it. I have the all the energy of a battery in my son’s remote control car. In other words, I’m totally drained.

We were up several times in the night because my son is sick. Since Saturday night, he’s had the high fever and cough virus that’s managed to blast through every family we know. Half the school must have had it by now. The other half will get it this week.

So I spent a long night with Tylenol, thermometers, cool washcloths, blankets, humidifiers, stories, and lullabies, chasing away the fever nightmares and trying to get him comfortable enough to go back to sleep.

Every parent knows exactly what it feels like to sit up all night with a sick child. The emotions are so strong – the despair when he moans and you can’t make it better, the utter relief when you feel his cheeks grow cooler and hear his breath steady out into sleep.

It’s part of the job of parent, to spend long nights battling helplessness and worry. And that’s just over a virus that we are pretty confident will eventually wear itself out and fade away. Imagine what we go through when it’s even more serious.

But we do it because we signed up for it in the very beginning. Right there, at the start, when we said, “Yes, we want a child!” we knew we were signing on for sleepless nights, bottomless fears, desperate worry, and semi-permanent exhaustion.

You’d think sane people would know better. You’d think we’d look at the list of “Known Side Effects” of parenthood and say, “Whoa, maybe we should get a cat.”

But we didn’t. We went ahead and signed on the dotted line, took the baby home, and what’s more, we took the tags off so we couldn’t return him.

And right there, in the middle of the night, when the fever made him dream of boulders falling toward him, and his hair was damp and clinging to his neck, and he couldn’t stop tossing and turning, I thought about how hard parenting is, and how I wouldn’t trade it for anything in this universe. And the reason is this: every few seconds, he kept whispering, “I love you.”

Through the fever, the bad dreams, and the miserable feelings inside, the lifeline he held on to is the same one I hold on to every day. We cling to it, knowing that we can survive anything as long as that lifeline is there. He loves me, and I love him, and eventually the fever will break, but the love will still be there, stronger than ever.

So even though this morning I don’t have the energy to make my bed, let alone clean my house, there’s a different kind of energy burning strong inside me. And that’s what makes being a parent worth it after all.

Preparing for Kindergarten

2008-02-11T10:35:00.000-08:00

It’s the time of year to start thinking about registering 5-year-olds for kindergarten. What a scary, exciting, scary – did I mention scary? – time. And as if it weren’t scary enough, if your child has a food allergy, it’s just that much … um… scarier. (Where’s my thesaurus?) A woman on the UFAN forum asked for advice on easing her son into kindergarten. Several people answered her, and it seemed like a great topic for my blog, so here’s my two cents’ worth.

My son is in 3rd grade now, and he and his best friend have been at the same school since kindergarten and they haven't had any anaphylactic reactions at school. (Knock on wood!) We’ve been lucky, but we’ve also worked hard to prepare ourselves. You can’t completely eliminate the risk of a reaction at school, but there are lots of things you can do to minimize the risk and prepare yourself to handle it if it happens despite your best efforts.

1. Volunteer a lot, so the staff knows you and counts on you (not just for allergy issues). If the only time they see you is when there's a food allergy, then you may start feeling like they're whispering "Oh no, here she comes again." But if they see you as a "Gosh, what would we do without her" kind of volunteer, then the occasional food issue will be coming from a great mom who's making a reasonable request.

2. Becoming the class mom lets you both coordinate and participate in all special events, parties, and field trips, which gives you a lot more control over food choices at those events. If someone else is already the class mom, or you can't volunteer for that position, tell the teacher you really need to attend all parties and field trips because of the food allergy. The teacher may want to let the other parents know that you'll be selected for all the special events because of the food allergy, so that they don't think the teacher is playing favorites or something.

3. Ask the principal if there are other food allergic kids in kindergarten, and if they can possibly be assigned to the same teacher. That makes it easier for the allergic parents to trade off field-trip and party chaperone duties if necessary, it puts all the kids in the same class so that the classroom can be more allergen-free, and gives you some backup in food issues. (It's nice to NOT be the only one.) Statistically, about one in twenty kids has a food allergy, so chances are good there will be more kids than just your child in his grade.

4. Volunteer to buy all the snacks or food materials for classroom parties or food educational units (like making noodle necklaces or gingerbread houses, etc.). Usually the teacher has to buy these or request donations. So tell her if she'll collect money donations, you'll go buy all the ingredients. They're usually delighted to get out of having to shop.

5. If he's going to be having lunch at school, talk to the Lunch Lady and cafeteria monitor. Introduce your child, tell her what your child is allergic to, and let your child know that the Lunch Lady is a friend that will help keep him safe. Then remember the Lunch Lady and the cafeteria monitor on holidays with little thank you cards or gifts to show you appreciate them. Few people do that. But it will help keep your child's food issues fresh in their mind, and they'll get to know him well.

6. Ask about setting up a food table in the cafeteria just for allergic kids. The table has a sign that says allergies only, and the cafeteria monitors clean it with a separate marked bucket and cloth.

7. Make several copies of your child’s Food Allergy Action Plan and have the office staff post one in the office, give one to the lunch lady, and have the teacher post one inside her closet door or elsewhere in the classroom, so that your child's photo and "What to do in case of a reaction" instructions are handy no matter where he is. The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) has a great Plan on their website here. Just have your child’s allergist fill it out and take it to school.

8. Practice with your son what he should do if he "feels funny." Role-play and pretend you're the teacher, and have him come up and tell you what's wrong. Often our kids are too shy about asking for help, so have him practice with you, and with the teacher if possible. Not only does that give your son words to use if something happens, but it helps impress upon the teacher how important it is.

9. I get on my principal's staff meeting agenda at the first of the year and give a 5-minute talk about allergies and demonstrate the EpiPen. I also give a presentation to my son's class, and all the teachers and aides he comes into contact with. If you're not comfortable doing this, ask if there are other allergic parents that you can contact. Talk to them about ways to teach the teachers -- maybe another mom would be willing to give the presentation if you get copies made of some information, or something like that. It's easier when there are two or more of you involved, trust me!

10. Remember your son can legally carry his EpiPen with him. But he probably can't administer it to himself in an emergency, so make sure the teacher and everyone else know where it is and how to use it. My son carries his in his backpack so that it's always in the classroom, and I also fill a second prescription and they keep it in the office. So he has two sets at school.

11. Be aware and be prepared, but don't panic! Kindergarten is going to be a lot of fun, and your child will do just fine. And believe it or not, so will you!

Vote for a Martha Stewart Allergy Publication!

2008-02-04T13:47:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, no one I knew had a food allergy. No one talked about food allergies. No one knew anything about treating them, let alone accommodating them.

Times have changed.

I think we can safely say food allergies have become mainstream knowledge when Martha Stewart considers a publication dedicated to food allergies and sensitivities! You go, Martha!

Yes, it’s true. This week on her blog, Martha Stewart is asking people to vote for their favorite of seven potential “Big Idea” projects for her to think about adding to her considerable empire. One of these Big Ideas is a publication dedicated to recipes for people with food allergies and sensitivities.

This is incredible. Even five years ago, spreading news about food allergies felt a lot like trying to shove an elephant through a pinhole. FAAN was out there on the internet, but unless you had food allergies and actively looked for information, you weren’t going to just stumble upon it. Magazines wouldn’t publish stories about food allergies (I know, I tried pitching stories to all the big parenting magazines back then). Everyone I talked to about my son’s allergies looked at me like we’d just made up stories about flying pigs.

Now, the view is completely different. Everyone seems to know someone with food allergies. Schools are aware (and adjusting slowly). The media is filled with food allergy news. Blogs and support groups are cropping up everywhere. Menus display allergy information. Registration forms ask about allergies.

And now Martha is even considering an entire publication devoted to helping people cope with food allergies and sensitivities. Good news is so welcome these days!

With one in twenty kids allergic to some sort of food now, the timing of such a publication couldn’t be better. Our numbers are doubling every five years, but despite these growing numbers, we often still feel very alone in our daily food struggles. A publication like this could give us connections, show us new recipes, give us up-to-date information, grant us a more unified voice, and help us work together to find ways to make the world safer for our kids.

I already voted for this Big Idea on Martha Stewart’s blog. Take a second and vote, too, by clicking here. One out of every twenty kids needs your click.

Celebrate That Can of Soup!

2008-01-28T15:34:00.000-08:00

One of the women on our UFAN forum this week discovered a can of Progresso soup that contains no nuts, milk, egg, gluten, or seafood (Chicken and Wild Rice flavor). In short, her son can eat it! She posted her discovery on the email list to share her joy at finding a safe “convenience food” that her son can have. All over the state, parents were quietly cheering for her. We all related to her discovery.

Non-allergic people can’t possibly understand how exciting that find was. But the rest of us on that forum know the feeling. It seems ridiculous – a simple thing like canned soup makes you weak in the knees? Come on, get a life.

Well, guess what? This IS our life. And finding a new food that your kid can consume can be as exciting as winning a new car on a game show. Trust me. Discovering Sunbutter (sunflower butter) kept me thrilled for weeks because it brought my son’s list of things he can eat for school lunch up to 3. Finding a good “safe” recipe for chocolate cake has kept my circle of friends giddy through several years’ worth of birthday parties.

Even my non-allergic friends get into this cuisine treasure hunt now. One day a friend called me from a craft store, of all places. “Let me read you this ingredients label,” she said, with nervous excitement in her voice. She read it. Not only did the ingredients sound safe, but then she read a final notice that actually explained how it was made in a factory that did NOT process nuts, eggs, milk, or other allergens.

“That sounds wonderful,” I said. “What is it?”

“Circus peanuts!” she exclaimed. Remember those orange marshmallowy peanut-shaped candies from our childhood? Who knew there was a safe brand of those floating around? Her kids aren’t allergic to anything. But she’s known us long enough that it’s become second nature to her to check ingredients labels, so when she stumbled across them, she couldn’t wait to call and let us know.

Sure, maybe we’re a little kooky because the discovery of a milk-free and nut-free brand of chocolate chips (F.M.V. at Smith’s) is cause for celebration. Perhaps we’re a tad bonkers because we spend an afternoon calling everyone we know to tell them we’ve found a safe boxed cake mix (Cherrybrook Kitchen).

Then again, life is all about the little moments that make us happy. And these discoveries are precisely that.

So next time you’re in the grocery store and you discover something new that your kid can eat, don’t be shy. Let out a whoop. Do a little dance. We’ll cheer you on.

Guest Blogger: Try a Support Group

2008-01-21T15:59:00.000-08:00

Today is a school holiday, so my son the whirlwind is home. He’s bored. I’m buried in magazine editing. My blog isn’t writing itself. Hey! Inspiration!

“Oh, Sweetie!” I call out. “Want to write my blog today?”

“Yeah!” he yells, switches off the TV, and comes running.

Bless his heart. If I’d said, “Your homework assignment is to write my blog today,” he’d have sulked and vanished into the couch cushions. But since it’s not homework, but a relished opportunity to have his words published online, he’s all over it.

So, please welcome my guest blogger today. His topic? Why parents and their kids might enjoy coming to a UFAN support group meeting. Once again, his flair for the dramatic is obvious. But as a proponent of free speech, I promise not to edit.

******
As you may already know, my mom leads the UFAN Davis County chapter. ATTENTION PARENTS!!! If you have any children with food allergies, this will be a very important meeting that you go see with your children. If you are worried about one of your children having an allergy reaction, I would suggest coming. Allergists sometimes do not give much information when you wind up with a child with food allergies. Stay away from one that when it is confirmed you have a food allergenic child says, “ Oh, your child has a food allergy to such-and-such. Stay away from this food.” Because that’s the quote that almost killed me.

HEY KIDS!!! It’s really fun going to the meetings—hey, I’m 9 and I like it!! It’s really not the kind of meeting that your mom goes to that practically puts you to sleep. It’s actually sort of fun!
Your friend,
Me

******
There you go. I promised not to edit, but that doesn’t mean I can’t comment. I need to explain “the quote that almost killed me.” He doesn’t mean that, of course. What he does mean is that the only advice the first allergist we saw said was, “Stay away from peanut butter.” He didn’t tell us about epi-pens, cross-contamination, reading ingredients labels, or even what a reaction would be like. I walked out of the office oblivious to the dangers of food allergies. If I hadn’t researched it on my own, we could have had some life-threatening situations, based on the lack of information we got from that doctor.

But now we have a board-certified doctor who is far more interested in making sure his patients are armed with the resources they need to survive. But even he doesn’t have the time to hand-hold us through all our questions, obstacles, and worries.

And that’s where a support group comes in. When my son was first diagnosed, there was no support group. Now UFAN exists, and we have support groups in Salt Lake, Davis County, and Tooele to draw on for suggestions, help, advice, commiseration, and even recipes. So, if you’re in the Davis County area (or even if you’re not), and you’d like to join us, we meet on the second Wednesday of every month. Watch our website (www.utahfoodallergy.org) for details on our chapter as well as the other chapters. Hope to see you soon.

Breaking Our American Food Obsession

2008-01-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

Americans are obsessed with food. It’s one of our worst habits (aside from invading countries, exporting bad dramas, consuming the majority of world resources, and gloating as morons humiliate themselves on reality TV shows). As a culture, we adults have become so food-driven that we can’t conceive of having any sort of social function without involving food. It’s the ultimate crutch – “Well, if we can’t think of anything to say, we can always eat something.”

Want to get together with a friend for an hour? Let’s do lunch or grab a coffee.

Want to go see a movie? Let’s get a large popcorn, even though we just had dinner.

Kids’ play date? Let’s bring snacks.

Business meeting? Order doughnuts.

Going to a kids’ soccer game, in which we actually get them outside running around? Quick, make an assignment list so we know who’s bringing the Oreos and Kool-Aid. Our kids can’t possibly last one whole hour without refined sugar coursing through their blood stream.

Science Fair award ceremony? We’d better order refreshments, ‘cause nothing says “Good job dissecting that cow’s eyeball” like a dry, store-bought, prefabricated chocolate chip cookie (speaking of science experiments…).

It’s obscene. No wonder we are a nation known for our obesity. (Not to mention diabetes, high blood pressure, and other health problems.)

The thing is, kids aren’t born like that. We go to great pains to teach them this behavior.

Adults would never leave half a cookie uneaten on a plate. Kids do. All the time. They get full (or bored) and they stop eating. Whoa, just try and find an adult that can do that! To most kids, snacks are cool, but playing is better. Ask a kid: Would you rather have a pizza or a new Legos set (or Barbie, video game, or ticket to the latest movie)? I guarantee you the kid will pick the new toy or movie.

This food obsession is an adult one. We force it onto our kids. It starts early, and we reinforce it hard. So by the time they’ve become teenagers, they’re firmly locked into the unhealthy eating habits that characterize America.

The frustrating part is, even if we try to break the habit in our families, our teachers do it.

Although our school has a well-known policy against using food in the classroom as rewards, we still have incidents crop up every month or two where we have to re-educate teachers or parents or substitutes about it. That’s just going to be the way it is, as long as adults are involved in our school. “The class that does the best Nutrition presentation gets a pizza party! Right after lunch! Yea!” (Hunh? Yep, an adult would dream that one up. The kids would rather get a free hour on the playground. No brainer. But no one ever asks the kids. We just apply our tiny little restricted adult brains to the problem and come up with… wait, I know! Food!)

Now, a friend of mine in another school is attempting to introduce the idea that using food as a reward is a non-useful teaching tool. (She doesn't have food allergy issues. She does, however, worry about her kids developing unhealthy approaches to food.) At her community council meeting when she brought this up, she encountered the resistance all adults throw up when faced with change. The immediate reaction was “How on earth could we NOT use Tootsie Rolls as rewards for getting right answers?”

Right there, I see two problems. First, they’re using food as a reward – bad American habit! Second, they’re REWARDING kids for getting a right answer. What? We have to bribe our kids to answer every question, now? That’s setting up a true sense of entitlement – another one of American society’s big ills right now. Getting a good grade is the reward. A sense of accomplishment is a reward. Praise from the teacher (“Good answer, Freddy”) is a reward. Our kids are being turned into guinea pigs who have to ring a bell to get a pellet. But that’s a different issue for a different day.

Anyway, my friend has asked for help coming up with a list of ways to reward kids for school participation without using food.

Any ideas? If you have suggestions for easy, cheap, fast non-food rewards that teachers can use, let me know (post a comment). I’ll start compiling a list. Then I’ll sit down with my friend and help her come up with a proposal.

We’ll do it over lunch.

Warming Up January Days

2008-01-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

You know the saying:

Thirty days have September,
April, June, and November.
All the rest have 31,
Except for January and February…

Which have 80.

Ah, winter. January is only a week old, and yet it feels like it’s been here for ages. How can a winter day drag on forever, but still be so short it’s dark before you get anything done? Just my luck. I’m always wishing for longer days, 8-day weeks, and 6-week months, but I’d prefer them to be of the warmer, brighter variety.

Oh well. Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. (Although I’m going to work on making my begging more specific.)

Still, it’s nice to get a new year underway, even if it does have the poor graces to begin with January.

We began our new year by going to a New Year’s Eve party at a dear friend’s house. Because we all take our kids, we celebrate the new year on New York City time, set off firecrackers in the snow at 10:00 pm, and go home to drop into bed. We’re such party animals.

Anyway, the party was a “dessert party,” so each family brought a sweet treat to snack on while we waited for the ball to drop (or the kids to explode, whichever came first). This was mostly a different group of friends than those who had the Christmas party in December, but the same two kids with food allergies were invited (my son and his best friend). So for the 24 hours before the party, I received phone calls asking, “Can I read you the ingredients label on this? I want to make sure what I’m bringing is safe.”

Again, I am overwhelmed by the generosity, caring, and consideration of friends. They don’t grumble. They don’t make a big issue out of it. They don’t ignore the allergies and bring a nut roll anyway. They thumb through recipes, ask about substitutions, and try out new combinations. They view it as a chance to experiment, rather than a cramp in their style. They can’t even imagine having a party where the two boys would be at risk. To them, it seems to be just a tangible way for them to express their friendship with us.

Now that I think about it, with friends like that, even January days seem warmer.

New Year's Resolutions and Other Lost Causes

2007-12-31T10:08:00.000-08:00

It’s everyone’s favorite time of year – that day when we look back on the past twelve months of our lives, take a deep breath, and say, “Can I get a do-over?” Then we look ahead, consider the vast array of possibilities, and say, “Geez, now what?”

So, in the spirit of the day, I’m going to sit down and dream up some thoughtful, carefully reasoned resolutions to better myself in the coming year. Either that, or I’m going to just make stuff up. You decide.

Kelley’s New Year’s Resolutions for 2008:

1. Mop the kitchen floor. (There, now I don’t have to do it today. I can safely put it off ‘til tomorrow, so that I can fulfill my first resolution.)
2. Stop referring to a family-sized bag of potato chips as “dinner.”
3. Spend less time lusting after Brad Pitt (because Johnny Depp is feeling slighted). (Um, and so is my husband.)
4. Finally figure out how to make pumpkin pie without milk or eggs.
5. Learn to say the word “No” without flinching.
6. Finish writing my food allergy cookbook and find a publisher for it.
7. Box up the books I’ve read, and read the books I haven’t.
8. Clean out my email inbox (3871 emails, and counting).
9. Locate the top of my desk. I’m pretty sure it’s there under all those “I need to look at this someday” papers.
10. Look at those “I need to look at this someday” papers. Oh, never mind.
11. Go sailing in the Caribbean.
12. Win $20 million in a lottery.
13. Exercise more.
14. Exercise at all.
15. Say the word “Exercise” without flinching.
16. Break resolutions #13 – 15 by January 2.
17. Find ways to reach more newly diagnosed food allergy sufferers to offer a helping hand.
18. Get all those photos from 2006 put into albums.
19. Laugh hysterically at the idea of putting all those photos from 2007 in albums. As if.
20. Refuse to take any photos at all in 2008. Hide husband’s camera.
21. Become addicted to caffeine.
22. Blame more of my personal problems on elected officials.
23. Pine away until Lost finally returns to TV in February. Spare some lusting time for Sawyer and Sayid.
24. Watch something in a movie theater that isn’t animated.
25. Be a good board member of the Utah Food Allergy Network.
26. Keep writing my blog. Try to make it funny at least once this year.
27. Learn to enjoy fake farting noises made by 9-year-old boys, because getting the 9-year-old boys to stop making fake farting noises isn’t working.
28. In between managing Homegrown Hospitality magazine, writing my blog, running the Davis County chapter of UFAN, writing articles for magazines, and writing my cookbook, find time to write something purely for fun.
29. Take down the Christmas decorations before the daffodils bloom.
30. Laugh at adversity. (Adversity really hates that.)

There you go: my 2008 plan for self-improvement. It promises to be a challenging, yet difficult year, sprinkled liberally with problems. But I won’t let that stop me from laughing, loving, and burning dinner at least once a day. After all, without goals, you’ll never know when you’ve failed and can safely give up.

So cheers to you, and happy 2008!

'Tis the Season To Be Baking

2007-12-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

Pumpkin bread, chocolate zucchini bread, cookies, pie, coffee cake… I’ve been in the kitchen a lot the last few days, and I’m not done yet.

If I had more time, I’d bake more stuff, too. I actually like baking. I’m not wild about cooking in general – that “What’s for dinner?” question drives me up a tree, and I’m usually the one asking it. But I enjoy baking, as long as it’s an easy recipe. Anything that requires more than 6 steps, calls for any ingredients that have to be purchased from an indigenous farmer selling them from the back of a yak, or that involves a double-boiler or spring-form pan gets knocked off my “try this someday” list in a hurry. I just don’t have that kind of patience.

But I do like coming up with new recipes for baking without eggs, milk, or nuts, especially at the holidays.

On Friday, I took several mini-loaves of pumpkin bread to school to give to my son’s teacher, the principal, the school secretaries, the “lunch lady,” and the school maintenance man. To each loaf, I attached a recipe card that showed the bread was without eggs, milk, or nuts. I wasn’t “making a point.” I was thanking them.

All of those people make the school safe for my son and the other kids with allergies – and I make it a priority to remember the maintenance man and the lunch lady, who I think most parents forget in the flurry of teacher-gifts. These folks go out of their way to keep an allergy table safe at the school. They enforce the “no snacks in the classroom” policy. They pin up photos of the allergic kids in the lunch kitchen so everyone remembers to be careful. They contact us when a food issue is coming up at school to make sure our kids will be okay.

I am SO grateful for these people.

So I baked pumpkin bread and took it to all the adults at the school that have a hand in keeping my son safe. And I made it without the most common allergens that kids in our school suffer from. Everyone seemed thrilled to receive the bread, and my son got a hug and a big thank you from each of them.

Now I’m baking just for my own family. We’ll make cookies today, because Santa will be expecting them tonight, you know, and we aren’t sure if he’s allergic to milk, eggs, or nuts, so we’ll make them safe just to be sure. And tomorrow morning, my coffee cake will be on the breakfast table (barring any disasters, like dropped bowls of dough, mis-read recipes, broken stoves, or forgotten timers and burnt results – all of which have historical precedents).

So keep your fingers crossed for me that my cookies don’t burn, my coffee cake doesn’t flop, and my pies don’t bubble over, and I’ll keep mine crossed for you that all of your holiday endeavors turn out beautifully, too.

And don’t forget to watch Santa’s progress around the world today and tonight on the Norad radar tracking system: www.noradsanta.org!

Happy Holidays!

Living by the Numb3rs

2007-12-17T09:10:00.000-08:00

I love the show Numb3rs. In it, an FBI agent solves cases with the help of his brother Charlie, a mathematics-whiz professor. (I love shows that make science look cool.) Several times each episode, Charlie explains to the other clever but clearly lost FBI agents (and us clever but clearly lost viewers) how some obscure but brilliant mathematical theory and formula can be used to pinpoint the suspect.

During these explanations, the scene morphs from a picture of, say, a tree to a computer-generated grid full of lines and vectors, degrees and measures, formulas, and arrows darting all over. It’s all very fast and dizzying as his explanation sketches itself across the screen, but in the end (even though none of the other FBI agents or us viewers actually understood a word of his explanation), you know that the case will be solved because all those lines and arrows looked pretty darned convincing.

Last night my husband, son, and I went to see a movie and then we went to dinner at a nearby restaurant. As we sat down at the table, my eyes darted around the table, over the menu, across the restaurant towards the kitchen, and back again. I realized that if you could draw my thought process, my brain would look a lot like one of Charlie’s explanations.

I’ve been dealing with my son’s allergies for so long now, that I don’t even realize all the calculations I do every day. But as I’m sitting down, I’m scanning the table for crumbs, baskets of bread, dishes of nuts, and other hazards. I’m looking at the menu to see how many of the items on it might contain nuts, to determine how high the risk of nut cross-contamination might be. I’m getting a feel for the overall restaurant – how easy the servers will be to work with, how clean the place looks, how crowded it is (calculating a risk of confusion in the kitchen), whether they have a kids menu, and what types of foods my son is going to be exposed to.

I’m assessing probabilities, calculating risks, formulating contingency plans, and estimating our best paths for success.

And all of that happens in the first few seconds.

From there, it’s a slower set of constant negotiations – “No, dear, you can’t have the bread because we don’t know where it was baked.” “Excuse me, do you put pine nuts on your pizzas here?” “Can you make my pasta without walnuts?” “Dessert looks like a bad idea. We’ll have some cookies when we get home.”

All of those constant calculations and recalculations, which seemed so overwhelming when I was first learning about my son’s allergies, have become second nature by now. And while I don’t walk into a restaurant completely relaxed anymore, it’s become so familiar that I don’t panic, and I’m really not even aware that I’m doing all those calculations. I’m pretty sure that if someone tried to sketch out my thought process on a blackboard, it would put some of those FBI scenarios to shame.

Math Whiz Charlie would be awfully proud of me.

Hey, that gives me an idea! Quick, someone call the producers of Numb3rs! I’ve got a great concept for a script!

Soups That Warm the Heart

2007-12-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

Friday night we got together with some friends for an annual soup pot-luck holiday party. For the five families involved, getting together for a holiday party has been a tradition for many years. The soup part of the tradition is a more recent development, but it’s turned into a great idea.

There’s nothing like a cold, snowy night (which Friday was) to make the thought of five steaming crock-pots full of hot, delicious soups and stews all the more enticing.

In this group of friends we have to accommodate two kids with allergies (nuts, peanuts, milk, egg, seafood), one family that prefers vegetarianism (although they do make exceptions), at least a couple of husbands who thrive on red meat, and one diabetic (me). Sounds complicated. But as the years go on, it becomes easier and easier to roll them all into your recipe criteria.

At Friday’s party, I think we may have had the best soups to date! There was a delicious taco soup, a bean chili, a peasant-style minestrone chock full of veggies, and a steak-and-potato soup. I made a Rustic White Bean Soup made of navy beans, turkey sausage, broth, and spinach (from Diabetic Dinners in a Dash by Art Ginsberg – you mash half the navy beans, which gives the soup a creamier texture without the cream). Everything was wonderful, and everyone tried at least a small serving of each soup (some more than once). We added some dinner rolls that were milk- and egg-free, a punch for the kids made of equal parts of Cran-apple juice and ginger ale, Lorie's fabulous milk- and egg-free chocolate cupcakes, and voila! We even got the kids to stop racing around the house long enough to eat. It was that good.

Accommodating allergies (and other dietary restrictions) is extremely challenging in the beginning. We all know that. But over time, you find friends and family members who are willing to explore new options because they care enough about you to make the effort. Between you, you begin to experiment and discover new recipes, good substitutions, and new ways to prepare old favorites that make them safe. Then one day you look around and realize you’ve got a safe environment for your child where before you saw only a minefield of potential disasters.

Our annual holiday get-together is a safe environment where our kids know they are welcome, they can play freely, and they can eat whatever is on the table. It just doesn’t get much better than that.

Travel Tips #2: Food During the Trip

2007-12-03T07:04:00.000-08:00

Our trip to Cancun has already receded to the domain of dreams. It’s amazing how quickly reality takes back over, isn’t it?

As promised, this week I’ll describe some more tips on how I handle my son’s food allergies when we travel.

When I start packing, I plan ahead and pack at least some food for the time we’ll be at our destination. I try to stay at hotels or condos that have a kitchenette, so that we can make at least some of our own food. If we’re doing a car trip, we take a cooler and keep it stocked with sandwich fixings, salad fixings, etc. If we’re flying, I often tuck in a collapsible cooler that we can use in the hotel if we need to (also comes in handy for taking picnics and beer to the beach!). I’ve also been known to hit the local Walmart to pick up a cheap Styrofoam cooler for the hotel, too, that is easily thrown away when we leave.

I carry a ton of snacks and food in my carry-on. In fact, my carry-on is usually almost completely filled with food, with just a little corner reserved for spare underwear and swimsuits in case we get stranded without our suitcases (it’s happened). That way, even if we’ve gotten stranded at a strange airport overnight, with our suitcases in Timbuktu, we’ve got a change of undies, the ability to play in the hotel pool, and enough food to make a highly unimaginative meal (or two) that may not win points from Good Housekeeping magazine, but it will keep us from starving. And even if we get to our destination in good time, by having breakfast food in the carry-on, that gives me until the next day to find a grocery store. (I hate landing somewhere after an all-day odyssey, then discovering that the grocery stores are all closed.)

There’s usually more food in my checked suitcase, too, because I’m not just packing food in case our flight gets delayed – I’m also packing food so that I’ve got safe options in case our destination proves allergy-unfriendly.

What food do I pack? He’s only allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, so what I carry is probably different from what someone else would carry. But I carry crackers, a box or two of breakfast cereal, NutriGrain bars or Rice Krispie treats that I made, fruit leather, ramen noodles or Easy Mac ‘n’ Cheese, coffee and filters, cookies, a package of dry salami that doesn’t need refrigerating until after it’s opened, a jar of Sunbutter – things that don’t need refrigeration and that can easily be prepared in a hotel room with hot water from the coffee maker, microwaved, or eaten dry. I figure that can get us through breakfasts for a week, and at least a few “I’m hungry!” moments.

Once there, I look for a grocery store and buy bread, lunch meat, drinks, fresh fruit, etc. And if options are limited, I get creative. Sandwiches don’t always have to be made with bread. They can be rolled in a tortilla, or stacked on crackers. Those are easy to pack, too, if I’m worried about buying bread in a foreign place.

At that point, I’ve got breakfast and lunch taken care of for the whole week. I can pack lunches and picnics in the cooler, using Ziplocs and ice from the hotel ice machines to keep things cool when we’re out sightseeing. That just leaves dinners to worry about. If I think the restaurant might not have safe food for him, I’ll pack him another sandwich and take it into the restaurant just in case. Sure, he may get tired of sandwiches after a week, but he’d be a lot more upset if he didn’t get to go on the vacation at all.

In Cancun, we stayed at a time-share condo with friends who’d generously invited us along to share their week. So we had the luxury of a full kitchenette with necessities like pans, plates, bowls, and silverwear. To save time, hassle, and costs (between us, we had 3 kids in tow, none of whom had the patience to sit for long times in restaurants), we made several dinners at the condo, and we ate at the resort restaurants just a few times.

Grocery shopping was interesting, of course. Reading ingredient labels in foreign languages is a bold new adventure, but we figured them out and successfully stocked our cupboards. I did find a clerk at the grocery store who spoke English, and I had her check the labels on a couple of items for me, just to make sure. She was happy to do it.

So between last week’s blog entry and today, now you know all my secrets to traveling: 1) I keep HandiWipes in my purse. 2) I pack my own in-flight food. 3) I pack breakfast food and snacks. 4) I pack a collapsible cooler. 5) I grocery shop for lunch food and keep it in the fridge or cooler in the room, so we can take picnics with us when we go sightseeing.

I have one more bit of advice – I carry a card with me that says “I am allergic to nuts” in the language of the country we’re visiting. I ordered a nifty one from www.selectwisely.com. Check out that site if you are planning any foreign-language travel. By knowing the words for allergenic foods, I can feel a little more confident about reading labels and ordering for him in restaurants when we do go out.

And here’s a bonus from all that pre-planning: The space the food took up on the way to my destination becomes empty space I can fill up with souvenirs on the way back!

Travel Tips #1: Surviving the Flight

2007-11-26T11:18:00.001-08:00

Ah, Mexico. Sunshine, margaritas, white sand, turquoise-colored ocean waves, rainbow-colored fish, Mayan ruins, dolphins, iguanas… Cancun was fabulous, and our trip was smooth, easy, and a lot of fun.

We travel a lot, and we’ve had some minor challenges with my son’s food allergies over the years, so I’ve learned a lot about how to plan ahead and stay safe so that the trip is a blast and not a bust. Since traveling with food allergies can be scary, especially if you’re new to the whole experience, I’ll spend this week and next explaining how I do it. It may or may not work for anyone else, but it’s how I cope.

This week I’ll talk about the first challenge, which is, of course, the airplane ride. To survive the flight without problems, I always carry two things: HandiWipes, and my own meals and snacks. With the HandiWipes, I can clean off the tray tables and arm rests before my son starts handling them. He doesn’t react to peanut dust in the air, fortunately, so we can be on planes that serve peanuts if I’m just careful about cleaning his area.

You can call ahead and request a no-peanut flight. I’ve had varying degrees of success doing this. It depends on the airline, the flight, the person you talk to, the flight attendants assigned to the flight, the alignment of the stars and moon, the political instability in Outer Splatvakia, and the mating rituals of sea porcupines. I’ve been chewed out by flight attendants because I didn’t call ahead, and I’ve been chewed out by flight attendants because I did. And most of the time, I just forget to call ahead or decide I don’t have hours to spend on hold. So I take my Handiwipes and my own snacks. Call it a cop-out.

As for in-flight meals, here’s what I do: I have a collapsible insulated lunch sack. In that, I tuck a couple of empty quart-sized Ziploc freezer bags (depending on how many flights are involved – 1 per flight). Then I put another Ziploc bag of ice in the lunch sack to keep the lunches cold until we get to the airport. Finally, I put in sandwiches that I’ve made, or lunch meat and crackers, cookies, etc. If we’re staying in the U.S., I can pack fruit. If we’re going to another country, you can’t take fruit across the border, so I’ll pack fruit leathers.

At the airport, before I go through the security line, I throw away the baggie with the ice in it (don’t want security getting concerned about a bag of ice), then go through the security gate. On the other side of the gate, I find a fast-food restaurant and ask them to put ice in one of the empty bags (sometimes the soda fountains are out in the public area, so I can fill my own bag with ice). Then I put that bag back into the lunch sack. Voila!

That’s how we make it through the flight. I still have to fend off flight attendants trying to give me peanuts (I am shocked at how many airlines still serve them). But at least I feel like I’ve got my little part of the plane under control.

Next week, I’ll explain how I handle food while we’re on vacation.

Meanwhile, now that we’re back in Utah, I’m trying to remember to put on socks instead of flip-flops in the morning. I’m never quite ready for a vacation to be over!

Twenty Things I’m Grateful For

2007-11-19T13:13:00.001-08:00

I’m going to be celebrating Thanksgiving in Cancun this year with my son and husband and some good friends – and boy, am I thankful for THAT! Wherever Thanksgiving finds you this year, I hope you’re able to spend some time doing something you love with people you love.

In honor of Thanksgiving, here are twenty things I’m grateful for, in no particular order. (Except for the first two.)

1. My son. I never dreamed love could be this big.
2. My husband. I never dreamed love could be this solid.
3. Email – so I can stay in constant touch with dear friends, colleagues, editors, bosses, family, and writing sources around the world with the click of a few keys.
4. Margaritas – made with real lime juice, very good tequila, triple sec, and a dash of Grand Marnier, over ice.
5. Caribbean islands, trade winds, white sand, and unravaged coral reefs.
6. Family members who love me and never hesitate to show it.
7. A career doing something I truly love (writing).
8. Lays potato chips – regular, unadulterated, salty.
9. Red rock canyons, hidden rock art, and the sound of wind hushing through sagebrush.
10. Modern medicine.
11. The internet – I can’t imagine being a freelance writer without access to a world of information at my fingers, even if it’s 3:00 in the morning. Librarians HATE it when you show up at 3:00 in the morning in your jammies demanding obscure facts. The internet doesn’t mind at all.
12. Friends – wonderful, dear friends; the kind who really will help you move (twice), who offer to take your kid when you’re running crazy, and who go out of their way to find or create allergen-free recipes because they want your kid to be safe at their house and parties.
13. The Bill of Rights -- such a simple document, with such unbelievable ramifications (which most Americans have long since taken for granted).
14. Eric Johnson, Steve Morse, Eric Clapton, and other guitar gods.
15. Blue sky and sunshine sparkling on a lightly dusted ski run, with the world rolling out in hills and valleys below me, the solar rays warming me, and lyrics from an old Kansas song running through my head.
16. My passport.
17. A southern Utah sky at night, with the stars so vivid and silent I can feel the earth spin in heartbreaking beauty.
18. The storytelling tradition that links all people through the centuries and across continents.
19. Chancing upon a poetic turn of phrase in the ordinary pursuits of everyday life.
20. Companies that make allergen-free foods, because they protect the joy of my life every single day.

Chopsticks and Other Birthday Surprises

2007-11-12T09:48:00.000-08:00

My son has become enamored of all things Japanese. He’s a huge Pokémon fan, and he’ll watch as much Japanese animation as I’ll let him (which isn’t much). About six months ago, he announced that he wanted to go to Japan. Our family travels a lot – we skip the expensive toys and save up for trips instead – so announcing that you want to go to some far away country is a perfectly natural thing to do around our dinner table.

When he made this announcement, I asked him why he wanted to go there. “Oh, you know,” he said, trying to pretend it wasn’t all about making a pilgrimage to Pokémon hallowed ground, “See the sights, see the people, try the food.”

Try the food? My son, the picky eater? The kid who wouldn’t eat wet food until he was 7? Who won’t eat a cooked vegetable if his life depended on it? Who refuses to eat food that is mixed with any other food? The kid who needs a new fork when he switches from his chicken to his pears?

The kid who’s allergic to nuts?

Oh dear. Japanese food uses a lot of nuts, I explained. And I think they cook with cold-pressed peanut oil that leaves the proteins alive and well and ready to attack unsuspecting allergic boys. Japan may be off the travel itinerary for a few years, I explained.

Undeterred, he kept up his requests for all things Japanese, including the food.

Then I found Tepanyaki – a Japanese restaurant in our town where the chef does the fancy cooking tricks at your table-side grill. Right there on the menu, it said they didn’t use nuts in their food. I asked the waitress, and she assured me they were a nut-free restaurant. I couldn’t wait to surprise my son!

Friday night, we celebrated his 9th birthday. After a party with 15 friends at the skating rink (whew!), we went to the restaurant for a family birthday dinner with just us and his grandparents. He was buzzing with excitement. His eyes were as wide as saucers as the chef entertained him with flying egg tricks, fancy knife-banging, and an onion volcano.

Then came the real shocker. My son the finicky eater tried EVERYTHING. He tried several sips of the soup and gave me the thumbs-up sign. (He hates soup.) He mastered the chopsticks in about 90 seconds, and used them to eat the stir-fried veggies. (He hates cooked veggies.) He dug into the stir-fry noodles. (He hates noodles with anything but margarine on them.) He ordered shrimp, gobbled it all down, then asked to try the salmon and scallops, both of which he loved, then asked for more. (He’s decided he loves seafood.)

My husband, my parents, and I all just stared at him in confused delight. “Who are you and what have you done with my son?” asked my husband.

The whole time, the birthday boy was grinning like a monkey and bouncing in his seat, eagerly looking for the next course and the chef’s next cutlery trick. When they brought out ice cream with a birthday candle in it, he blew out the candle, then proceeded to eat the ice cream with chopsticks. I kid you not.

Tepanyaki has just vaulted to the top of my son’s favorite restaurant list. If he can’t go to Japan, this will be the next best thing. Seeing him so happy at a restaurant where he had the freedom to try anything on the menu made me feel like I got the real birthday gift this year.

You know what this means, don’t you? It means that I’m buying a big box of chopsticks, and from now on, whenever I cook anything new, I’m going to tell him it’s Japanese.

Guest Blogger: My Earliest Allergy Memory

2007-11-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

Today, I have a special guest blogger… my son. I wanted him to write about Halloween, but he decided to write about his earliest allergy memory. (Naturally. My will is the law in this household, you know.) The events he describes might be slightly enhanced, but he was only 2 at the time, and he does have quite the flair for the dramatic…

"Hello! I’m Kelley’s son. I have food allergies that complicate my life in many ways. Especially because they can kill me! However, I have a secret weapon…Benadryl and EPIPENS! They are the things that save lives like mine all over the World. Without them I wouldn’t have lived to tell this story. In fact I wouldn’t even be here right now. Because there was an accident when I was two. We were at Arctic Circle when a person that worked there offered me ice cream. (We didn’t know about my food allergy to peanuts.) We accepted it. Then it happened… I had an allergic reaction! Luckily Mrs. Kim came along with Benadryl and said: “TAKE THIS BEFORE YOUR CHILD CHOKES AND KILLS HIMSELF!!!!!” After that fiasco she said: “Don’t you know about FOOD ALLERGIES!?!?!” My mom, dumbfounded said: “No what the heck are you talking about?” After Mrs. Kim had finally satisfied herself with her lecture about allergies, and I had said ‘thank you for saving my life’ about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times, her boy and I have been Best Friends ever since. Now I carry these medicines everywhere I go. Everywhere I go I read labels and ask about food."

Hi, it’s me again (Kelley). For the record, we DID know about his food allergy, but just barely. So I was a little panicked when he had that reaction. Fortunately, Kim was with us and offered us her medicines. I gave him Benadryl, and we made it to the doctor’s office in time and didn’t have to use the Epipens.

Since that episode, we’ve learned a lot. My son, who will turn 9 this week, has learned how important it is for him to be aware of his own allergies. He does very well managing himself at school and with friends – he asks about ingredients, he reads labels, and he doesn’t hesitate to inform people of his allergies. We’ve come a long way, baby!

Trick-or-Treat Survival Tips

2007-10-29T13:31:00.000-07:00

I brought my box of Halloween decorations up from the basement last night. It’s sitting in the dining room now. I haven’t actually taken anything out of the box, but I think if I leave it where we have to walk around it every once in a while, that’s festive enough.

My son, on the other hand, is so excited for Halloween he can hardly sit still. He’s been counting down the days since August, poring over Halloween costume catalogs with his friends and calculating which streets he’ll hit to get the most candy.

He doesn’t care that he won’t be able to eat half of what he gets. The candy is nice, but it’s really the least important part of the whole night – the adventure is what’s important! Dressing up, seeing everyone else in costumes, wandering around after dark with flashlights and glowsticks, knocking on door after decorated door yelling “trick-or-treat,” and marveling at a normally quiet neighborhood crawling with ghouls and beasties – oh, it’s a night kids dream about!

As usual, we parents of food-allergic kids often blow the candy thing way out of proportion. So today I’m going to talk about some trick-or-treat survival tips.

Halloween isn’t nearly as much about the candy as it is about “getting” the candy. So as a parent, I don’t feel guilty, sad, distressed, worried, or angry that my kid is going to get a bucket-full of candy he can’t eat. I don’t want him eating a bucket-full of candy, anyway! The first year we dealt with allergies, I decided not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, or in this case, I decided not to throw the whole experience of trick-or-treating out with a few handfuls of candy.

So if you’re struggling with what to do, stop struggling. Let your kid go trick-or-treating (or trunk-or-treating, if that’s your preference). It’s okay. Just lay down some rules before-hand, so there are no surprises. Then let them enjoy the adventure of trick-or-treating, because that’s really what it’s all about. Here are some survival tips that work for us:

Tip #1: No one eats anything until everyone gets home and the parent reads the label on every piece of candy. That way, no one is eating unidentified foods and having a reaction while you’re out in the dark a block away from home. Make sure the kids agree, understand, and agree again. Get them to narc on each other if necessary. No one sneaks anything.

Tip #2: If you child is super-sensitive to an ingredient, you might have them wear gloves with their costume, so that any allergenic candy that touches their hand on the way into the bag doesn’t cause a skin reaction. Toss the glove in the wash or in the trash when you get home.

Tipe #3: Unlabeled candy is assumed to be unsafe. Period. The only exceptions are brand-name candies that you are already familiar with and know are safe. (For example, I know Dum-Dum lollipops, Starbursts, and Skittles are okay for my son, so I’ll let him keep those.) If there is a type of candy that he’s particularly interested in, I might promise to look for it at the store the next day, and read the ingredients there. But it goes into a separate container until we’ve seen it at the store and verified its safety.

Tip #4: Talk about what to do with any candy that isn’t safe BEFORE you go trick-or-treating. My son's an only child, and he has a good friend who is, too. They go trick-or-treating together, and at the end of the night, they pool all their candy together, then divide it up. She gets all the candy he can’t have (except for the Three Musketeers bars – those are mine!), and she gives him the “safe” candy. It works out about evenly. Sometimes she ends up with a little more, but my son doesn’t mind. He’s actually grateful that she’s taking the “bad” stuff. Plus it’s a lot more fun to go trick-or-treating with a best pal than by themselves, so they’re willing to do whatever it takes to get a night together.

If your kids don’t have friends willing to trade candy, other options for getting rid of “unsafe” candy include:

1) Trade unsafe candy for safe candy that you have bought ahead of time.

2) “Buy” the unsafe candy from your child – but establish a price ahead of time, such as a nickel a piece, a dollar a pound, or the whole kit and caboodle for a new DVD, a small toy, a trip to the movies, a night out with Dad, a visit to the dollar store, or other such treat.

3) Look for a dentist or other business in your area that buys candy from kids on the day after Halloween. There’s at least one dentist in Layton that does. The kids get money, and the dentist donates the candy to a children’s hospital, I think.

4) Let the child “donate” the unsafe candy to Mom or Dad, so they can take it to work and share it with their coworkers.

5) Let the child donate the unsafe candy to a local women’s shelter, food bank, homeless shelter, or family of an Iraqi soldier – the soldiers always seem to appreciate candy that they can share with friends or give to Iraqi children.

That’s it for my survival tips. I hope they help. Now, can someone help me get my decorations out of the box before Wednesday?

Phantom Gifts are Spooky

2007-10-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

Ugh. I’ve been visited by The Phantom.

The Phantom is an annoying neighborhood ritual where neighbors leave anonymous treats on your doorstep, along with a cutesy Halloween poem and a drawing of a ghost. You hang the ghost on your door so everyone will know you’ve already been visited. Then you’re supposed to make new treats and deliver them anonymously to two other neighbors, with copies of the same poem and ghost. Then they give them to two neighbors, and pretty soon, the whole neighborhood is glowing with gratitude, a warm sense of community, and a ruined diet.

I hate this ritual. Call me Scrooge. (I know, wrong holiday.)

It’s not that I don’t like my neighbors. I DO like my neighbors. I have some really nice neighbors, in fact.

It’s not that I don’t like giving neighbor gifts, either. At Christmas time, I like taking small gifts to my immediate neighbors, because we don’t get to see each other very often during the short, cold winter days, and it’s a good excuse to say hi.

So why am I grumpy?

1) It’s anonymous, so I don’t know if I can trust it. I don’t think eating food you find lying around on the ground is a good idea in the best of circumstances. What if this same plate of brownies has been regifted through four busy neighbors already? It could be a week old before I even see it! Or what if there’s someone in the neighborhood who hates me and thinks I’d enjoy brownies laced with pot, Ex-Lax, or rat poison? I don’t think I’ve offended anyone, but you never know. Maybe someone hates blue Hondas, and they’ve never forgiven me for driving one. Hey, these are human beings we’re dealing with. People are weird. It happens.

2) It has an obligation taped right to it. I prefer doing something nice because I want to, not because I’ve been told to. Heaven knows I have enough obligations piled up right now, without some blue-Honda-hater telling me I have to stay up past midnight baking cupcakes to deliver them to two other unsuspecting harried moms.

3) It contradicts the #1 Halloween trick-or-treating rule we enforce on our kids. Honestly, this is the one that amazes me. Ever since the 1960s, when rumors of LSD-tainted candy and apples containing razor blades ran rampant, children have been told to never, ever, EVER eat a Halloween treat that wasn’t individually packaged from the store. But when unidentified home-made treats show up on your doorstep, you’re just supposed to take it inside your home and blithely feed it to your children? Are you KIDDING me?

4) And last but not least, the anonymous goodies left on your porch never come with an ingredients label. I feel bad that whoever went to the trouble of staying up past midnight, satisfying the obligation ghoul, has now wasted her time and money by leaving these treats for a food-allergic family that can’t eat them because we can’t tell if they contain peanut butter or almond extract. If the anonymous part of this trick was removed from the treat, and people just added a little tag saying “From the Smiths,” then I could call up Mr. or Ms. Smith and ask about the ingredients. Or at the very least, I could thank them for the gift. And get to know a neighbor.

I know this ritual was intended to be a community-building exercise. And I know most people probably think I’m over-reacting. But all that the Phantom gifts give me are misgivings and guilt – not really the feelings the originator intended, I’m sure.

So I taped the paper ghost to my door so no one else will bring me anything, and I let my little branch of the Phantom network die. I figure other neighbors are continuing to spread Phantom joy and anonymous “I dare you eat this without knowing its origin” gifts to the other neighbors, so no one will feel left out if I don’t participate.

But don’t worry. I’ll make up for it on Halloween. I’ll give all the kids that come to my door twice as much candy as the neighbors. And it’s all nut-free, milk-free, and egg-free, too. They’ll know who it’s from, and they’ll know it’s safe, and they’ll see me smile when I give it to them. And they won’t have to give it to two other neighbors or tape a sign to their door afterwards, either.

I like my Halloween heavy on the treats, and light on the tricks. And I think community-building exercises should let you get to know your neighbors, not hide from them.

Scrooge may be my middle name, but I still can’t wait for Halloween!

Monday, Monday

2007-10-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

Monday morning. The weekend’s over. That means we’re back into the daily melee of packing the school lunch, finding the matching socks, flattening the wild bed-head hair so he doesn’t frighten the teachers, reloading the backpack, listening for the carpool honk.

It’s also milk delivery day. I order milk, eggs, and bread from a local dairy because they’re hormone-free (the milk and eggs, that is, not the dairy employees). It’s more expensive, but it makes me feel like I’m doing something healthy for my family. Gotta counter-act the PopTarts and drive-thru burgers somehow!

Over the last couple of years, this dairy has been turning into a grocery store on wheels. They keep adding food to their available stock. First, it was fruit juices and yogurts. Then they added fresh produce. Over the last year, they’ve been adding hormone-free meats (tempting, but way out of my weekly grocery budget because it’s so much more expensive than grocery store choices), as well as Italian and Mexican food, such as pasta sauces and tamales. Last week, I noticed they added coffee beans. (What ARE they feeding those cows, anyway?)

This morning, I got an email survey from them, asking about more food choices and how likely I’d be to purchase them from the dairy. The interesting thing was that the very first question was something like “What dietary choices do you make when buying food for your family?” The options I could check included “Allergy: Nuts,” “Allergy: Milk,” and “Allergy: Wheat,” along with things like “Low Fat” and “Diabetic.”

Food allergy awareness! Yippee!

Five years ago, I felt like Kim and I were the only people in Utah who knew about food allergies. Now I find allergy warnings and information on restaurant menus, door signs at fast food joints, food packaging, and now even consumer surveys!

This makes me happy because… well, you know. I’m selfish. I want everyone to know about allergies so that it will make my son’s life (and mine) easier.

But all this food allergy awareness also makes me sad because… it means a lot more kids have food allergies. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But it’s a fact of life nowadays, so there you go.

At our support group meeting last Wednesday, a new mom came. (New to allergies, I mean, not new to being a mom! I’ve really got to learn to be more specific.) She’d recently discovered her child was allergic to nuts, and she was having a hard time dealing with it because she felt so overwhelmed and alone. She seemed quite glad to find us, and we welcomed her into the “club” with open arms and hopefully enough encouragement and information to help get her through this tough adjustment period.

As hard as it is for anyone to learn they’ve got to deal with allergies, I am so glad that for this mom, life will be just a little easier than it would have been 5 years ago, because awareness is rising. And it’s because of a million other ordinary moms and dads just like us, all across the country, who are quietly having to explain to teachers, relatives, neighbors, restaurant managers, and babysitters that food allergies have to be understood and accommodated.

Amazing what we everyday folk can do, isn’t it? After all that, surviving a Monday morning is a piece of (allergen-free) cake.

Phthalates, Matthew McConaughey, and Fish?

2007-10-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

I was reading an interesting book this week – Boys Adrift, by Leonard Sax. It describes what he considers the 5 factors that are contributing to the decline of the productive male in American society. Basically, he sees an epidemic of “slacker dudes” everywhere he looks – young men who have no ambition and no drive to do anything but play video games, live like parasites off their parents and/or girlfriends/wives, and indulge in online porn. He likens them to the Matthew McConaughey character in the movie Failure to Launch.

I read it with a degree of skepticism. I don’t know too many males living this life he describes. Most of the men I know are gainfully employed. Those that aren’t have chosen to be at-home dads, and they’re working hard at that role. They’re definitely not the slackers Dr. Sax is describing. But then again, most of the men I know are already well into their 30s or above. And none of them look like Matthew McConaughey. Maybe my sample is skewed.

However, as I talked to some friends this week, a couple of their younger brother-in-laws cropped up in the conversation, and they sounded suspiciously like the slacker dudes in the book. Hmmm.

While I don’t necessarily agree with everything the doctor was describing in his book, it made me think about some things I hadn’t really considered before. One of the 5 factors he describes is the unfortunate celebration of violence and law-breaking in video games – I agreed 100% with that one. But one factor I hadn’t ever heard of before was “endocrine disruptors.” Basically, he cites a bunch of studies that show that phthalates –chemicals in polycarbonate plastic used in things like bottles, plastic wrap, and baggies – are being blamed for mimicking estrogen, causing a drastic drop in men’s testosterone levels (among other things), and killing the ambition and drive that testosterone controls in men. I’m oversimplifying, of course, but you get the idea. He even cites studies that show one out of every three college-age men have sexual dysfunction now. One in three? Wow. That certainly wasn’t the case when I was in college!

Oddly enough, the estrogen-mimicking chemical seems to have the opposite affect in women – women seem to have more energy and drive to accomplish things than before, and their bodies are maturing at an earlier age.

He also reports that in some areas where phthalates are prominent in the water supply, such as the Potomac River, male fish are growing eggs instead of sperm and male animals are becoming feminized. As my son says, “Ewwey!”

So what has this got to do with food allergies? Maybe nothing. But this alarming decrease in men’s testosterone levels has been happening over the last couple of decades.

That got my attention. Food allergies have drastically increased over the last couple of decades, too.

And, coincidentally, the rate of autism has been increasing over those same couple of decades.

Nothing says these three things are related. But it kind of makes me wonder. Thirty or forty years ago, we didn’t use plastic in nearly as much food packaging. We didn’t have as many synthetic chemicals in foods. We didn’t lug pre-bottled water everywhere we went – we drank it out of glasses or metal thermoses. (On the other hand, we did use a lot more really nasty stuff like DDT and asbestos. So perhaps we’ve just traded poisons.)

Phthalates have made our lives more convenient. But maybe it’s changed our bodies in ways we’re just beginning to suspect.

During the Roman Empire, the Romans made amazing strides in civilization. Their forms of government, their art, their philosophy, and their architecture grew by leaps and bounds beyond anything that had come before. One of their incredible inventions that made city life so much more progressive, hygienic, and convenient was indoor plumbing. They ran water pipes throughout their cities, bringing fresh water to the populace and draining “used” water away. It was a phenomenal accomplishment.

The only problem was that the pipes they laid so precisely were made of lead.

Madness was an unexpected, and to the Romans inexplicable, side effect of convenience.

I can’t help but wonder if, in the name of convenience, we are now changing our environment in ways we don’t yet understand, introducing problems we don’t know how to fix, or affecting our society in ways we can’t recover from.

Great. Like I needed something new to worry about. Of course, I’m just grasping at straws and probably making mountains out of coincidence molehills. We’ve got years of studies ahead of us before we really find out what’s happening to cause all these food allergies. I would welcome some solid science right about now.

Oh well. I gotta run. I’m going shopping for a steel thermos.

I'll Keep My Own Bag of Troubles, Thanks

2007-10-01T06:53:00.000-07:00

My very good friend Shari once told me about an old Jewish proverb – something about how if we could all put our troubles in a bag and set it on a table, and then pick up someone else’s bag, we’d choose our own again.

Funny how often I think about that.

When my son was 4, we’d already known about his peanut/nut allergy for a couple of years. I was having him retested to see if – against the odds – he’d outgrown it. With kindergarten looming (okay, so it was still a year and a half away – I like to get a head-start on my worrying), I was feeling sorry for myself, wondering why my son had to be cursed with a food allergy that would make normal school lunches anything but normal. How would I keep other kids from rubbing their PB&Js in his hair? What would I do if the teacher insisted all the students make ladybugs out of walnut shells? What if my son got tired of salami sandwiches? O, woe is me!!!

A little over the top, I admit.

To get his blood drawn for the allergy test, we went to a nearby hospital. It happens to be a renowned children’s hospital, with the expertise and facilities that draw young patients from across the western U.S.

As we walked down the hall looking for the out-patient lab, we began passing some of those patients and their parents. There were children in wheelchairs, their bodies crumpled and contorted. There were children on gurneys, hooked up to machines that made sure their hearts kept beating or their lungs kept filling with air. There were children with bright smiles and missing limbs, and others with body parts intact, but a glazed-over look to their eyes that belied other damage.

Meanwhile, my 4-year-old whirlwind was running down the hall, shouting excitedly about the primary-colored mechanical water sculpture in the next lobby. As I tried to keep him from clambering into the fountain or hopping across the benches, I felt like I should be apologizing to all the other parents. This was a place for terribly sick children, I thought to myself. My child wasn’t sick – he just had food allergies!

And just like that, my perspective reset itself. All my self-pity was transformed into a sense of shame, and my own bushel-bag of burdens began to look snack-sized.

What had I been whining about? My kid could run, laugh, climb, and get into a thousand varieties of trouble – all before breakfast! So what if I have to be extra careful about the breakfast he comes into contact with? So what if I have to carry an EpiPen? I and my son have the very good fortune to be living in an age when we have EpiPens, knowledgeable doctors, and an amazing variety of safe foods to choose from.

A few minutes later, my son was asking the nurse a dozen questions about drawing blood, and he watched, fascinated, as she drew his. His sharp little mind was so busy figuring out how the needle and tube worked that he forgot to cry. All the way out the door, he chattered about how the next time I needed blood drawn, he could do it for me.

As we stepped out into the sunshine, I tucked my bag of troubles into my pocket. It felt familiar and – while not quite comfortable – a lot lighter.

Now, whenever someone new says, “Oh, dealing with his allergies must be terrible!” I try to imagine what might be lurking inside their bag of troubles. Then I shake my head, smile, and say, “As challenges go, I’ll keep this one, thanks.”

Spawntawnumous and Proud of It!

2007-09-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

I’m spawntawnumous!

Now, before someone runs for the antibiotics, that’s a good thing. Honest.

Friday afternoon, I was keeping Kim’s kids while she and her husband took care of some appointments. It was supposed to be just for the afternoon. One of her kids asked me if they were staying for dinner, and I told her no, her mom and dad would be back before then. I handed her some Oreos for a snack.

The appointments ran long, and Kim called and asked if I could keep them a bit longer. No problem. My son and these kids consider each other siblings. They could happily move in with each other and not blink an eye. In fact, they frequently request that.

My boy is allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, but that’s all. He lives on all the normal kid food – macaroni and cheese, fish sticks, hot dogs, pasta, cheese, pizza. You know. The stuff we don’t like to think about too much as we feed it to our kids.

His best friend, the oldest of the kids we were watching, has more food allergies – nuts, peanuts, milk, eggs, fish, fresh tomatoes, etc. So I have to pay more attention to what I can feed him and how I fix it. Usually, I know ahead of time when I’m going to have him for dinner, so I can plan to have safe food on hand. But since I hadn’t been planning on this evening (and hadn’t been to the grocery store in a while), I crossed my fingers and rummaged through the freezer.

Success! I found a bag of milk-free and egg-free chicken nuggets, with enough for four hungry creatures who’d been racing around the yard all day. I rummaged through the fridge. Aha! A bag of carrots, and a can of crescent rolls – the milk-free kind. I rummaged in the pantry. Yippee! A can of mandarin oranges! I rummaged in the freezer again. Yes! Frozen fruit popsicles! Okay, so maybe I don’t get points for health and nutrition, but at least it technically qualifies as food from all the major food groups.

I called Kim and her husband to tell them I was fixing dinner for the kids, and that they should go out to dinner and enjoy a little peace and quiet.

Then I threw the chicken and crescent rolls in the oven. The smallest child, who had asked me about dinner earlier, came inside just as I was closing the oven door. She looked up at me with hope in her five-year-old eyes. “Are we having dinner here?” she asked again.

“Yes, sweetie. You sure are.”

Delight lit up her face. Then she squealed, “You’re being spawntawnumous, aren’t you?!”

Spawntawnu-what? I thought. Spawntawn… Spawn…

Spontaneous!

Over the years, as Kim and I have found safe foods that her son can eat, I’ve slowly changed my own shopping habits. Whenever there’s a milk-free and egg-free version of a food, I now try to buy it. My family doesn’t need it to be milk- and egg-free. But since I never know when I might have these kids in my house, I’ve learned that it’s easier to have the safe foods than wish I did. (I’m a slow learner, but I eventually get it.) It also eliminates accidents and mistakes.

So now I only buy milk-free margarine. (It bakes better than the milk version, anyway.) I only buy milk- and egg-free white bread. I keep the pantry and freezer stocked with milk- and egg-free fruit snacks, popsicles, cookies, salsa, chips, tortillas, hot dogs, smoked sausages, barbeque sauce, crescent rolls, toaster pastries, and crackers.

So all that extra ingredients-label reading over the years has finally paid off. By modifying my shopping habits and stocking my kitchen with “safe” snacks and foods, I have officially become…

Spawntawnumous!

And boy, if you could have seen the look on that little princess’s face, you’d know how proud that makes me.

Support Groups, Kim, & Other Godsends

2007-09-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

We had our planning/kick-off meeting for the new Davis County chapter of the Utah Food Allergy Network last week. Yea! We’re off and running!

Boy, do I wish there had been a support group for food allergies when The Human Whirlwind was diagnosed with peanut and nut allergies 7 years ago. I was completely clueless. After a brief encounter with his first peanut butter sandwich raised hives on his face and made him go hoarse, I took my toddler to an allergist who said simply, “Yep, looks like he’s allergic to peanuts. He might outgrow it, but stay away from peanut butter in the meantime.”

That was it. That was the sum total of this doctor’s sage advice. I had no idea what I was in for. No idea how dangerous cross-contamination could be. No idea that a peanut allergy gives you a 35% chance that you’ll be allergic to tree nuts, too. No idea that skin contact could cause a reaction. No idea that I should be carrying an EpiPen, or even Benadryl. No idea my son could die.

What I did have was a brand-new acquaintance named Kim. She’d also just found out her kid was allergic – to far more foods than my son, in fact. And she, fortunately, had visited a better allergist, who took the time to tell her more information. Kim sat with me at play-dates over the next few weeks, and while we watched our kids take random stabs at learning concepts like “sharing” and “waiting turns” and “not eating electrical cords,” she told me what she’d learned about food allergies from the internet, books, and her doctor.

Slowly, it began to sink in, and I realized that I had to research this condition myself and not rely on one doctor’s off-the-cuff “I’m-too-busy-to-talk-to-a-silly-mom” pat answers. After an accidental exposure to peanut-flavored chocolate on an ice cream cone sent us flying to the ER (with Kim and her kids following behind me with her EipPen, just in case), I found a new doctor and new determination to learn everything I could to keep my boy safe.

Kim was my one-person support group, at a time when I desperately needed one. Between us, we’ve spent 7 years learning, sharing, exploring, baking, and teaching our way to a safer world for our kids.

I can’t even imagine how hard those years would have been if I’d been the only parent I knew with a food-allergic kid. As silly as it sounds, just having someone to get giddy with over the discovery of allergen-free chocolate chips is a godsend.

So that’s why Kim and I are starting up our group here in Layton – because I know there are a whole lot of parents out there who are dealing with this, too. Some have just learned that their kids are allergic, and they’re going through the angry, shocked, despairing, disbelieving, overwhelmed stage of this. Other parents have been dealing with it for a few years now, and they have lots of great ideas, advice, and suggestions that they’d love to share with the newer parents.

So I am excited about starting up this new Davis County group. We’re going to have speakers, discussions, recipe exchanges, holiday tips – we’ve already got meeting topics lined up clear ‘til spring. So if you know anyone in the Davis County, Utah, area who could use a hand in the food allergy fight, let them know we’re out here, on the second Wednesday of every month. See our website (www.utahfoodallergy.org) for details.

Finding My Inner Mama Bear

2007-09-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

Today starts week 4 of third grade. According to my son the human whirlwind, life has devolved into pure misery. The shiny new school supplies are all scuffed, torn, or lost. The thrill at seeing friends again has paled. His teacher, while he likes her, apparently uses an evil-genius tractor beam to glue their eyeballs to their papers. (Hooray for her!)

On the plus side, he’s practicing his math skills by calculating how many more days are left until summer vacation.

I’m counting the days, too. I know it seems crazy, but I actually like having him around. I’m one of those few parents who really doesn’t look forward to the school year. Now that he’s eight, he’s capable of entertaining himself for whole minutes at a time. Seriously. And he’s a lot of fun.

But I’m getting used to the routine, so I’m adjusting. Getting all the “beginning of the year” tasks out of the way helps, too. For instance, at the end of the first day of school, my friend Kim and I sat down with his teachers and did “the talk” – where we explained about out sons’ food allergies, how serious they are, how to use an EpiPen, how to keep the classroom environment safe, and so on.

It’s always intimidating to talk to teachers. There’s that nagging little worry that they might not take the allergies seriously, or that they might be one of those rare people who thinks people with food allergies are just control-freak weirdos who are trying to get attention. (Well, I might be, but that’s a different story.) But more importantly, even though I’ve been an adult for … oh… a couple of years now (but who’s counting?), I still have this ingrained fear that the teacher might send me to the principal’s office! Fortunately, his teachers were interested, concerned, and very receptive. And the only punishment they exacted on us was to ask us to come into the class and explain food allergies to the kids.

So the next morning, Kim and I stood in front of 25 third-graders and tried to make food allergies sound serious enough to pay attention to, but not so scary that they wouldn’t talk to our kids anymore. The amazing thing about kids is that they actually care. (Handing out erasers helped.) They paid attention, and they offered to tell us about all their relatives and friends who also have allergies. There’s even a third boy in the class who’s nut-allergic, too. (Three in one class?!)

The next week, I DID get sent to the principal. Actually, I asked for it. Signed up for it, in fact. Every year, I ask the principal if I can come speak to the teachers in her staff meeting to tell them about food allergies and demonstrate the EpiPen. So there I was, with my wonderful friend Kim riding shotgun once more, telling the teachers that statistically, one kid in every class could have severe food allergies, what to watch for, and how to respond.

The fun part is always demonstrating the EpiPen. I scan the room and look for the one or two teachers whose eyes get really wide and panicked-looking. Then I talk directly to them, gently, and walk them through it. I know if I can get them to calm down and accept that it’s just a tool, just a little needle, and a simple thing to do when the alternative could be watching a child die in front of them, then the rest of the teachers will get it, too. It seems to work.

Of course, the trick is doing all these talks and demonstrations every year without passing out myself. But the thing about having a kid with allergies is… you get over yourself. The mama bear in you knows that you can’t be a shrinking violet anymore, and you’ve got to protect that child of yours no matter how squeamish you are about speaking up. You find strength you never knew you had.

Grrr. Hear me roar. Or, come to the staff meeting and watch me demonstrate an EpiPen. Your choice.

The best part is, it’s done. Whew! I don’t have to get sent to the principal’s office again.

Until next year.

Lunch Variety, Schmariety

2007-09-03T11:07:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was looking at a web site that talked about “bento box” school lunches. The idea is interesting – basically, you use a lunch box with lots of little compartments for different types of food. Supposedly, having mini compartments for mini portions of fun finger foods makes lunch more interesting, so kids eat it. Some suggestions included sandwiches cut into cookie-cutter shapes, veggies with dips, and wraps cut into 1-inch lengths and stabbed through with fancy toothpicks.

It’s a good idea, but it would be wasted on my son (aside from the fact that arming him with fancy toothpicks out of my sight shows questionable judgment).

School lunch at my house consists of three options:

1. Pasta with non-dairy margarine in a thermos
2. Salami sandwich (dry)
3. Sunbutter sandwich (SunGold Foods’ Sunbutter is a peanut butter look-alike that’s made from sunflower seeds. I swear it tastes and feels like the real thing, and it’s completely nut-free. Their web site is www.sunbutter.com, and I promise they don’t know me from Adam, so this isn’t a paid endorsement! But if you’re missing peanut butter in your house, even your non-allergic picky Aunt Freida will love this stuff.)

Of those three options, my son really only wants the noodles. The other two are the emergency “I forgot to buy more pasta” options.

Variety is just not important to some kids. We adults have a hard time accepting that, the same way we insist our child needs a sweater if we happen to be chilly ourselves.

Although my son is only allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, the main reason the selection is so limited is because his best friend is allergic to milk and eggs, in addition to peanuts and tree nuts. My son and his buddy sit together at the “allergy table” at school, and my boy refuses to eat anything at school that might make his friend sick. So that eliminates all cheese, which is his primary staple at home – he’s the only 8-year-old I know who stops at the cheese table at the grocery store and begs for mozzarella balls, brie, gouda, and bleu cheese – yes, he actually likes bleu cheese! It also eliminates most breads. But we have found one brand of milk-free and egg-free bread and a couple of brands of egg-free pasta, so we can do sandwiches and pasta.

He likes grilled meats, such as chicken, pork chops, and steak, but not if they’re cold and sliced on a sandwich. He also hates all sandwich meats except for salami. I used to pack a veggie or fruit in his lunch, but he refuses to waste time eating them, because he wants to get outside and enjoy his recess. So I stopped wasting perfectly good carrots and bananas. I figure the pasta will get him through the afternoon, at least until he gets home and I can feed him something healthier.

So all those great ideas for bento-box variety simply won’t fit into my son’s little mental compartments. The only variety he cares about is the shape of the pasta he picks each week.

Fortunately for me, he views lunch as fuel, not as an event. So while I worry that he’s sick of the same old thing, he isn’t yet. And until he complains, I guess I won’t waste time or energy trying to force more variety into his lunch box. And I sure won’t spend $30 on a cute little compartmentalized Japanese-inspired bento box lunch pail (although my son would think that was WAY cool).

That leaves me extra time to worry about introducing more variety on the dinner table, right?

K.D., Food Allergy Warrior Princess

2007-08-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

Much to my son’s surprise, he survived his first week of third grade. What’s more, he didn’t get sent to the principal’s office! I was relieved.

The first day had an interesting element to it, however. My son’s best friend is also food-allergic (to milk, eggs, nuts, and seafood), and they are in the same classroom. This is fortunate, because the friend’s mom, Kim, is also one of my best friends, and this means we can share all the classroom food issues that come up.

The first issue came up surprisingly fast.

After lunch, all the kids started coming back into the classroom before the teacher returned. One girl brought in her little carton of milk from lunch. Now, the school policy is that no food leaves the cafeteria. This is partly for food allergies, but also (perhaps mostly) to keep the carpets clean.

There’s another girl in the class, K.D., who has been a best buddy of my son and the other allergic boy since they were all about 18 months old. She’s grown up understanding food allergies nearly as well as either of the boys, and the three of them have been through thick and thin together. She and my son have always acted like siblings – they are both strong-willed, opinionated, determined to be the leader, and unwilling to back down. In other words, brother and sister in all but blood, and they’ve weathered the fights to prove it (and the teacher has already told them they can’t sit together anymore). But despite that, each of the three of them will defend the other to the death, if need be, and woe be to the person who tries to lay a finger on any of the Three Musketeers.

Guess what happened when the unsuspecting student brought the milk into the classroom. As both boys were apparently looking worried and trying to figure out what to do, their female champion tackled the problem headlong. She began chewing out the hapless milk-girl, telling her she couldn’t have milk in the classroom, demanding that she remove it and go wash her hands, and telling her the damage she could cause the stunned boys. The other girl tried to argue, but she was up against a master.

By the time the teacher returned, it was all over, and none of the kids even thought to tell her about it.

After school, Kim noticed a tell-tale itchy spot near her son’s eye, and the boys reluctantly told us about the confrontation. Kim and I asked both boys what they did while their BFF defended them. They admitted they didn’t do anything. In fact, it was clear they were both intimidated. “Why didn’t you do something?” we both asked, aghast. What had happened to all our counseling about standing up for themselves and letting an adult know when there was a dangerous situation? My son has never been one to back down from a confrontation, and certainly he’s never been shy about informing people of his allergies.

“It was girl talk… a girl argument,” he said, as if that explained it all. “I was staying out of that.” His friend agreed. It was obvious that both boys thought Kim and I were nuts if we expected them to get in between two girls having an argument. Besides, they knew their friend had the situation in hand, and if they tried to jump in, they’d just get hit by nasty female crossfire.

I know adult men who haven’t figured out that lesson yet – proof that our boys are above average in the smarts department, if you ask me.

After Kim and I sputtered maternally for a few minutes about how they need to be responsible for themselves and they can’t rely on their friend to handle every situation, we backed off. After all, an amazing thing had happened that day. Kim and I realized that we aren’t our sons’ only protectors. There are other people in this world who care about them enough to protect them.

They’re called friends.

And even if they’re only 8 years old, they make a huge difference in our lives. And we can’t thank them enough.

Thank you, K.D. We love you.

In a Cooler World

2007-08-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

“In a cooler world, I’d be allergic to school,” says my 8-year-old son.

Alas for him, he’s not allergic to school, and today is his first day of third grade. The first day is always a tad traumatic. First, there’s the annual “Dragging him bodily out of bed” ritual, because despite our good intentions we let bedtime slide the last few weeks, and now he’s used to sleeping in.

Second comes the lively “No you can’t watch cartoons, you’ve got to get dressed” debate – a perennial favorite.

Third, of course, is the “Oh, no, look at the clock, we’re going to be late!” dance, which no back-to-school morning is complete without.

Then, once we get to school, I’ve got a whole additional set of annual kick-off traditions, including reminding his new teachers about his food allergies, visiting the lunch lady to make sure she’s got the allergy table set up for all the allergy kids, and asking the principal for a time to demonstrate EpiPen usage to the new staff.

For some of you, those last three annual routines may be really challenging. I am lucky -- I love my son’s school because the administration and staff have been understanding about food allergies since day one. One of the reasons I worked to get my son into this school (it’s a charter school) is because the school has a policy of not allowing food (in other words, candy) to be used as rewards in the classroom. That wasn’t because of food allergies – it’s because we Americans have gotten into the bad habit of rewarding ourselves with food, and the school’s original principal wanted to start kids out with a healthier approach to food. So right way, my son’s already better off in this school.

Then, when I and another mom of a food allergic child approached the staff about accommodating food allergies, they were willing to listen. They set aside a table in the lunchroom for all kids with allergies. Half the table is dairy-free and nut-free; the other half is just nut-free. The kids with allergies are invited (but not forced) to sit there. Other kids can sit there, too, but only if they bring a “safe” lunch and have a note from someone the lunchroom staff trusts saying it’s safe. That way, best friends can join their food-allergic pals for lunch.

The lunchroom staff have a separate bucket and rag to clean the table with, and a sign declares the table off-limits to non-allergic lunch eaters.

The funny thing is, the allergic kids view the table as kind of a club. It’s fun to sit there; they feel special. When a new kid shows up, it’s cause for celebration. If someone tries to sit there with danger foods, the other kids speak right up and let the kid know they need to sit at another table. The allergic kids don’t seem to feel ostracized – quite the opposite. They feel bonded with each other.

So with all the challenges of starting a new year of school, it’s nice to have one small thing going my way. I’ve talked to other parents from other schools who fight constant battles over how to keep their children safe at lunch. I still have to worry about whether my son is swinging from monkey bars smeared with peanut butter from another kid’s hand at recess, but at least I know that for lunch he’ll be sitting at a safe table with kids he knows he can trust.

It may not be a cooler world as far as my son is concerned, but as for me – well, I’ll be adding one more item to my list of back-to-school rituals: making a special point of thanking the folks at my son’s school who go out of their way to keep him as safe as they can.

Food Allergy Skepticism

2007-08-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

I’m practicing wearing contact lenses today. I gotta say… yuck. I don’t like ‘em. This is my fourth day wearing them, and they are irritating. Literally. My eyeballs feel sticky and gummy and cold. Yeah, cold. I don’t get why, but they do.

You’ll never guess what my first thought was.

OK, you did guess: “I wonder if I’m allergic to the solution?”

I wonder why we’re so quick to assign the word “allergy” to anything that makes our body feel funny.

I don’t know if I’m allergic to my contacts. I’m going back to the eye doctor in a couple of days to find out his best explanation. In the meantime, I’m still wearing them for a couple of hours each day so I can make sure it’s not just a “getting used to them” sort of problem. Maybe I’m just being whiney. (Hard to believe, but my husband might suggest it’s a possibility.) But it’s really, really tempting to assume I’m allergic right off the bat, with no data to support it.

Have you ever encountered someone who doesn’t believe you when you describe how serious a food allergy is?

Silly question. Of course you have. We all have.

I can’t figure out why some people don’t believe me. Do I look like the kind of person who would walk up to you and say, “Hey, let me tell you a big, fat lie”?

Maybe part of the problem is that too many people have used the word “allergy” in so many ways for so many reasons for so long, that the word no longer has any impact.

How many people have you heard say they were allergic to cigarette smoke, when really they just hate it and don’t want to be around it? (I admit it. I used that excuse in my teen years, thinking I was being clever and creative. Surely it would have been easier to just say, “I don’t like it,” but that’s teenage logic for you.)

And a huge percentage of folks have pet allergies or common hay fever, which is an allergic reaction to pollens. In most of these people, pollen allergies cause discomfort (or misery) in the form of watery eyes, sneezing, sinus pain, itchiness, etc. But for the majority of sufferers, pollen allergies aren’t usually a life-threatening disease and don’t usually cause anaphylactic reactions. (There are always exceptions, unfortunately.)

So when people hear “food allergy,” they tend to think, “So you sneeze a little. For Pete’s sake, take some Benedryl and get over yourself.” Because most of their experience with allergies up to this point has been either imagined annoyances or the real -- but mostly non-fatal -- hay fever or pet allergies.

And then there’s the confusion with food intolerances. Lactose intolerance is a well-known disease now, thanks in large part to all the commercials for drugs that treat it. But now non-sufferers often think a milk allergy is just lactose intolerance. They don’t understand why we’re so freaked out about whey in the ingredients list of a cracker. “Why can’t you just take a pill?” they ask, annoyed, clueless that a food intolerance is a completely different disease than a food allergy.

So they, and I, and probably you, have developed a healthy skepticism for the word “allergy.”

I don’t know what to do about it, though, short of coining a new word for life-threatening food allergies, or using the adjective “life-threatening” in front of the word “allergy” in all my conversations. (I don’t know about you, but I don’t like using that term on a frequent basis in front of my impressionable 8-year-old.)

I guess I’m resigned to having to explain patiently to the uninitiated, over and over. A little education goes a long way.

I’m also vowing to be careful how I use the word “allergy.” So when I go see the eye doctor, I’m not going to say the word. I’m going to describe the symptoms, and let him suggest possible cures. And if he says “allergy,” I’m going to ask how he knows. Maybe there’s a test to prove it.

How do you handle people who don’t believe how serious a food allergy is? Do you have any ways of explaining that seem to get through, without creating a new enemy? Let us know your tips!

One in Twenty Kids Have Food Allergies

2007-08-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

By Kelley J. P. Lindberg

When I was in school (150 years ago), I didn’t know a single person who was allergic to food. Not one. Never even heard of it.

Now, organizations such as the National Institutes for Health and the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) estimate that as many as one out of every twenty kids in the United States has a severe food allergy. That rate is double what it was just five years ago.

Holy Peanut Butter, Batman!

How did this happen? No one really knows.

There are plenty of theories, naturally. One says maybe kids are exposed to more potential food allergens earlier and more often than they used to be. (Well, maybe, but every kid in my generation cut their first tooth on a peanut butter sandwich.)

On the other hand, another theory says maybe kids aren’t exposed to ENOUGH allergens and bacteria at an early age to build up immunity. Perhaps we’re too anti-bacterial for our own good.

Maybe in earlier days, babies and toddlers with severe food allergies died more often without anyone ever knowing why, so they simply didn’t live long enough to get to school, let alone to reproduce and pass on their food-allergy genes. And now that medical science has improved, so have these kids’ survival (and reproductive) rates.

Maybe peanut allergies are increasing because we dry-roast peanuts in the United States, unlike in Asia where they boil them and have a lower allergy rate.

Maybe the proliferation of petroleum-based and synthetic chemicals in and around our bodies has been messing with our immune systems for the last generation or two, confusing our bodies into mis-identifying what is and isn’t a hazard.

Or maybe doctors just recognize food allergies more often now, and it’s getting reported more consistently.

Or maybe it’s a combination of all of those “maybes.”

Or maybe it’s something entirely different.

We just don’t know. And not nearly enough funding money exists to do the type of long-range and in-depth studies that would be required to find out. So we speculate and shake our heads and pack Epi-pens everywhere we go.

It’s easy to think it doesn’t really matter why – we should focus on finding a cure. But that brings up the old adage about treating the symptom and not the cause. If we can find out why food allergy rates are doubling every five years now, maybe we can stop the causes and reverse the trend. If we find out, for example, that synthetic food additives we eat every day have caused our immune systems to whack out, then we could spend more energy talking food manufacturers into eliminating those types of additives instead of just printing better warning labels.

I don’t have a solution. And I don’t have a few million dollars lying around to fund my own study. (Wouldn’t THAT be lovely?) But I do have a voice, and I like to talk. (Heck, I’m female. That goes without saying!) And I would like to support those who ARE trying to work on understanding the causes.

So if you know of any on-going scientific studies into the root causes of the rise in food allergies, let us know. And if you’re involved in one, thank you!