This was anaphylaxis wasn’t it? Nuts.

[Mytortoiseisbetter]

Ds2 (16) has always had hay fever/throat-clearing type symptoms ans the odd rash after food but last night something more serious happened.

he ate 4 Brazil nuts and a few minutes later his throat felt weird and his breathing became noisy. His eyes were red.

We happen to have a neighbour who is a local GP and he kindly came over. He got ds2 to take antihistamine. Then he got an inhaler, then a steroid inhaler. The throat cleared a bit and he sent ds2 to bed saying he should go to hospital if it didn’t settle. He said “we’d know by now” if it was going to be severe (he stayed with us for an hour)

I slept in the same room as ds2. Shortly after going to bed he got very agitated saying his heart felt like it was on fire. I thought it was a panic attack but then he threw up and after that it all subsided. He says his throat still feels a bit “cottony”.

I had assumed the vomiting was a response to the inhaler but Google tells me that vomiting and heart issues are actually part of anaphylaxis especially if food-related.

this morning I obviously called our own GP who ordered a RAST(?) test but that’s not till next Friday. She said normally you call 999 with any breathing issues.

I realised I’d failed to tel, her about the heart and vomiting to called back and gave a message to the receptionist.

dh is in complete denial saying “it could be nothing”.

it’s not though is it?

my neighbour has shown us where their epipen is (it went out of date in 2020).

Not sure what I’m really asking here. I guess a handhold? My older son had a life threatening emergency just a month ago requiring neurosurgery and I’m only just recovering from that!

@Mytortoiseisbetter toblerone- you’re a genius! I He loves toblerone

Who doesn’t?

Only the original though, none of the newfangled flavours 😁

let me know if you discover any pearls of wisdom in your book!

ooh what was the name of the Fb group you found please?

My when I tried DS on walnuts we parked at the hospital and wandered around the grounds for a couple of hours.

Nutella!

My DS is anaphylactic to peanuts only. I use ground almonds extensively in cakes for him and also nutella. (And ferrero rocher).

I am glad you know now. It is so stressful. I will say though that we have found avoiding nuts to be extremely straightforward but like a pp said sometimes you will be refused service in a restaurant. Not rudely, but just because they might have a really small kitchen and cannot guarantee there will be cross contamination.

Other things (This is particularly pertinent to me at the moment) don't forget when you get travel insurance to make sure the nut allergy is listed.

DS is just shy of 13 and we found out he was allergic to peanuts when he was about 10 months old 'the hard way'. Since then we carry epipens (emerade at the moment) and have never had an issue. His allergy is not only an ingestion allergy but also a contact allergy so once when I accidentally ate peanut sauce at a party that was not labelled I had to take the precaution of not kissing him or hugging him for about 24 hours. But generally you get really used to what you need to do. That said - my parents want to meet up in Thailand next year (they live in NZ) and I am not prepared to risk it just because I cannot be sure.

I am on team consultant 2 as well. What has been drummed into us by our consultanbt is that a nut allergy is exceptionally unpredictable and there can be a cascade effect. So you think there is no reaction, then a little reaction and then bam. An anaphylactic reaction. It's not to be messed around with.

lol We’re off to the LGI carpark today for cashews :).
do you think they have a designated section for nut-testers?

Gnarly yes I will put on a post about the book.

I’m currently confused in that on the one hand the (very) new evidence seems to be to eat nuts with a safe history. But then there are all these stories about cross-reactions. So I don’t feel I’m on solid ground yet.

this is going to be very good for his A level biology.....

Other flavours of toblerone indeed ! Good grief! Pish!

Update. He ate a single hazelnut in the hospital carpark and all was good.

so we have now reintroduced peanut, pistachio, almond and hazelnut :).

Cashews, walnuts, pine nuts, macadamia nuts still have question marks. He was tested (negative) for walnut and cashew but not the other two. Still don’t understand the science but seems walnut and Brazil share a protein

@Mytortoiseisbetter well done!! Does he eat a lot of pesto? My DS does, and our brand has cashew and pine nuts in.

It does feel slightly less awful when it’s not ALL nuts, I think, and when it’s fancy ones like Brazils and walnuts which are hopefully in less things than eg peanuts or hazelnuts <clutching at straws>

@Mytortoiseisbetter on job list tomorrow is to ring up our travel insurance and tell them about his newly diagnosed allergies.

I was also thinking about getting him some sort of medical alert bracelet- they do some quite cool silicon type ones now with printed info on it. Haven’t told DS yet, not sure he will be overly impressed

This made me LOL, my DS is allergic to prawns (reacted badly age 2 - now 19) (finally about to be admitted for a challenge where they feed him them - gulp !) but we'd said a few years ago whilst we was waiting we'd Rock up to the a and e car park and eat one to see how he reacted whilst with a friend with an epipen. Thankfully we will know if he's got worse or outgrown it

Remember that pine nuts are not nuts (they are seeds) and neither are peanuts (legumes). You can of course be allergic to them and also be allergic to tree nuts (my DS is allergic to tree nuts, peanuts and some seeds) but the are not part of the same allergy if you know what I mean. It's important to know the difference as the cross sensitivities may well be different. I found this out the hard way many moons ago when my DS was little. I knew he was allergic to peanuts and I assumed they were nuts so was very careful about other nuts but paid no attention to introducing legumes. Then he had an unexpected severe reaction to some vegetable soup, which the A&E staff couldn't understand either. It wasn't until he reacted again to something else that I twigged what was happening - it was lentils - and then went on to discover that peanuts and lentils are both legumes and that he was at risk of reacting to others in that group. Nobody had warned me of this possibility. I'd just assumed everything with the word nut in the name was a nut - but they aren't.

@MrsAvocet oh blimey, sorry to hear that. Thanks for the info- I have a lot to learn. It’s all very new to us and it’s come totally out of the blue after 12 years of utterly normal eating!

If you can get hold of them there is an Israeli peanut-based snack called Bamba which is a very good way of keeping up peanut intake www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/kosher-/osem-bamba-snack-100g

That must have been rough with the soup :(

The whole nut/seed thing is very confusing! Lots of websites saying things that are technically right but will lead to different conclusions depending on phrasing.

Yes there is a lot of contradictory information out there. I tend to stick with Allergy UK and The Anaphylaxis Campaign as DS's Consultant said they are reliable sources.
One of my relatives is a botanist and she's tried to explain how all these plants are related, or not as the case may be, but it goes over my head. Apparently even within tree nuts there are species which are more closely related to each other than others meaning a higher likelihood of cross sensitivity if you are allergic to one in the group, but I can't remember which is which. As DS has either had a reaction or a strongly positive test to every kind of nut I know the name of, we have just adopted the policy of avoiding them all anyway.
He is most sensitive to cashews, which apparently aren't nuts in botanical terms either - they are something called drupes, as are almonds, and I think, walnuts too. Fortunately he is ok eating cherries etc which are also drupes, it's only the ones where we eat the inside not the flesh that seem to bother him. But it is always a little niggle in the back of my mind when he tries unfamiliar stoned fruits or seeds on holiday etc. It will always be a worry but you can't let it stop you living life and he has to eat something!

A pleasant surprise this morning is that DS nut allergy is covered by our travel insurance (via our bank)- I was sure it would go up, or be a problem.

Your DS needs to be tested at a Hospital childrens' allergy dept.

If he is allergic to Brazil nuts, he's also likely to be allergic to Walnuts too. DS's consultant says tree nut allergies are paired.

Hi. My son has allergies to some tree nuts.
Biggest reaction to skin prick testing was to Brazil nuts. He has also reacted to walnuts, pistachios and cashews.
He has never had a severe reaction although we have been prescribed epi pens. He has however had less severe reactions to contact with very small amounts of nuts. With very severe stomach cramps and vomiting that lasted a few hours.

Waltzing, he has had skin prick negatives to walnut & cashew, but the advice on reintroduction seemed more connected to whether he had eaten them regularly before

Basically, all nuts are something else! They are légumes or seeds or drupes …

Yes this is what our consultant said too @Mytortoiseisbetter - for “nuts” that he eats regularly without adverse effects, she wants us to continue to have them regularly in his diet.

looking at the allergy and anaphylaxis uk pages, I’m still not sure whether this could be the oral pollen syndrome thing or not. Is that less severe?? Who knows <I need a shrug emoji!>