talking about it helps. Obviously you can't show anything in front of your child and I did feel quite tearful afterwards. No matter how careful you are there's always a contamination risk/ risk they'll develop another allergy.
Bozza I'm sorry but an epipen which is not with the child is no use at all. You really ought to talk to the child's mother. It may be that the risk to the child is small but with nut allergy you can't really tell. I told my friend I wouldn't take her asthmatic child out with me without her inhaler, in your place I'd ask for the epipen.
Symptoms - tickle in throat. We've had that before several times and a bit of antihistamine usually deals with it. So it was out with the piriton and 5ml straight down. Didn't like the way she looked - hard to say what but it was like her first bad reaction - so another 5ml followed. She started to look very distressed but kept insisting she was fine and just hot. She was going quite pink. Then she stopped talking, I said you can't talk can you and she shook her head. Her breathing became quite obvious - slow, laboured - and she looked really frightened. So I used the epipen. She moved slightly to make it easier. That shows how worried she was as she hates the idea of using it normally. Within minutes her colour was back to normal and she was telling me I'd forgotten to rub it.
The food was a ready meal of baked beans and nuggets - a rare treat for her as we don't normally have prepared food. I've phoned the manufacturers help line to ask about nut contamination, they're going to phone me back but the initial reaction was that they thought the factory was nut free. If it was nut contamination there's a small possibility it was from something like her school books (they sell nuts at her school now). It may have been another allergen, like soya, which is why I'm arranging more allergy testing.
She's gone off to the school with a note about the sale of nuts there. We can't just phone the hospital as it's so long since she's been seen. Keep in touch with your consultants, people, so you don't have to join those long waiting lists again. I see our gp later this morning to ask for a new referral. I have the telephone number of the nearest paediatric allergy specialist seeing private patients for a private referral if I can't get an NHS one.
We'd become complacent because we'd had several years without any type of reaction. It was a reminder that we can't afford to be and brought back all those fears I had when she was first diagnosed. Tomorrow I expect I'll have it back in perspective. The pen worked, even if I didn't do it quite right. We had a back up epipen if I'd needed to do it again. It was probably useful in making us more careful again. But right now I just want to wrap her up at home and keep her safe.