Nuts
Not that I don't love my husband dearly, but I don't think I can stand to look at that mustached-picture of him for another day, so it's time I come up with something to post!
We had expected it to be a fairly quiet week around here. Holidays are over, everyone is getting back to a routine, it's the calm before the storm of inauguration... but everything changed on Monday morning about 10:30 when I decided, for some strange reason, to let Madchen try a cashew.
A couple hours later we were in the emergency room of the local hospital. Apparently she is allergic to cashews.
Thankfully, her reaction was only a skin reaction, and she never had trouble breathing. Nonetheless, it's an indescribable feeling to be driving your daughter to the hospital, seeing her skin covered from head to toe in hives (actually they were more like purple welts), not knowing if she would suddenly have trouble breathing. I have never experienced such fear. Even though her mood was fine while we waited in the ER hospital room ("Yay! Daddy's here too!"), and we came home safely a few hours later (after much benadryl and a massive shot of steroids), and she's seemingly not traumatized by the event, I am shaken to the core by what happened.
Tomorrow we'll see her allergist and presumably start a new course of allergy testing. I'm thankful that we already have a great allergist who treats her skin troubles. Hopefully he'll help us answer all of our questions. I'm shocked this happened because she's clearly been exposed to nuts in the past, and has never had a reaction. Perhaps she's never actually been exposed to cashews, only peanuts. I know they belong to different "families". And I thought she had been tested for all nuts in her original allergy testing that we did a while back, but perhaps I'm wrong on that as well.
Whatever the case, our girl got it right when she told me Monday night: "I'm all done with cashews."
We had expected it to be a fairly quiet week around here. Holidays are over, everyone is getting back to a routine, it's the calm before the storm of inauguration... but everything changed on Monday morning about 10:30 when I decided, for some strange reason, to let Madchen try a cashew.
A couple hours later we were in the emergency room of the local hospital. Apparently she is allergic to cashews.
Thankfully, her reaction was only a skin reaction, and she never had trouble breathing. Nonetheless, it's an indescribable feeling to be driving your daughter to the hospital, seeing her skin covered from head to toe in hives (actually they were more like purple welts), not knowing if she would suddenly have trouble breathing. I have never experienced such fear. Even though her mood was fine while we waited in the ER hospital room ("Yay! Daddy's here too!"), and we came home safely a few hours later (after much benadryl and a massive shot of steroids), and she's seemingly not traumatized by the event, I am shaken to the core by what happened.
Tomorrow we'll see her allergist and presumably start a new course of allergy testing. I'm thankful that we already have a great allergist who treats her skin troubles. Hopefully he'll help us answer all of our questions. I'm shocked this happened because she's clearly been exposed to nuts in the past, and has never had a reaction. Perhaps she's never actually been exposed to cashews, only peanuts. I know they belong to different "families". And I thought she had been tested for all nuts in her original allergy testing that we did a while back, but perhaps I'm wrong on that as well.
Whatever the case, our girl got it right when she told me Monday night: "I'm all done with cashews."
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