Hidden Ingredients in Lotions

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.”

Caribbean Dreams

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?

At Long Last, Summer!

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.

Snack Bars in Paradise

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

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.

All the News That Fits Food Allergies

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.

Travel Tips #2: Food During the Trip

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

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!