Schoolboy who suffered two heart attacks after being given a chocolate by teacher

[AuntieMaggie]

I don't have children yet but this really made me cry here

I hope the poor boy recovers soon :(

LadyDam' - i agree, there are alot of people who fuss around their child and say they can't have this and they can't have that because it might disagree with them, this has made it an awful lot harder for people like myself and you as my dd has always been allergic to egg and nuts (peanut and hazle') but has fortunately grown out of dairy and now seems to just about be able to tolerate egg as a cooked ingredient. alot of people don't understand and to be honest, i too wouldn't if i didn;t have a dd with it. it scares the shit out of me although she rarely has a reaction as we are extremely careful and so is she, i taught her about her allergies as early as was possible but there is still plenty of room for mistakes made by both myself and her. her school is very good, sometimes i think overly so, it pisses off the other parents (some of) who do not have an allergy child, they totally ban sweets that may contain nuts. i think this is too far really, my dd is 8 and now in juniors, she knows she cannot join in the sweets being handed out when it is someones birthday, her teacher has some in her draw that dd can have, to be honest, it would not annoy me if the other children brought it something that contained nut as i trust dd however not all kids can be trusted. dd's bf ma doesn't get it at all, whenever dd goes over there (not often) she ALWAYS makes a big deal because i tell her dd will take her own biscuits etc as it wouldn't be safe for her to eat hers, she sulks as she takes this personally. i can't tell you how many times i have nicely talked to her about her allergy and that i have epi pens with me all the time as she could have an attack that would be fatal but she STILL nags me to allow her to give dd biscuits etc. tbh, if i were having someone else's kid round who had allergy i wouldn't want to be trusted to give them food incase it went wrong. i do in part feel sorry for the temporary teacher. then again, in this day and age even if she didn't know the kid had allergys (and she should have been told) she shouldn't have handed out sweets as it is quite common for nut etc allergy with children, lord knows why....

At our school, any child with a serious food allergy has "the allergy diet" for lunch. It's egg-, dairy-, wheat-, fish-, shellfish-, sesame- (and very possibly celery-) free. It's tough on the kids (they eat a lot of soy) but frankly the simplest system has giot to be the safest.

I know this isn't about the OP, but there are quite a few gluten and dairy-intolerant/allergies on this thread.

They can eat ice-cream, if they try Swedish Glace
It's vegan and gluten free and dairy free.

I knwo it might confuse some of the children if they know they can have ice cream ,but not ice cream (iyswim) but if you said they can only eat this specific ice cream, they might understand "special ice cream for my allergy"

But snowjive, soy is one of the big 8 of the most common allergens, so even that is not safe! DS1 takes his own lunch into school so that I know what he has had, but it really annoys me when teachers give out sweets, chocolate, ice-creams, cakes etc and treats (e.g. end of term or for doing a good piece of work). There simply is no need for it and they could give non-food treats instead.

It's soya a common allergen too though snowjive?

I didn't know that soy allergy was so common, I'm sorry. It sounds as if the allergy-free diet needs to become even narrower. They won't let the children bring packed lunches in - maybe that will have to change. On the other hand, they are very careful about what they hand out for snacks (teachers don't hand out treats, thank goodness) and I send in food from home for snacks and for when other parents send cakes for birthdays etc.

Overuse if the word allergy is a good point. One mother insisted I put down on dd's form that she was allergic to mince, although she could still eat beef. What she meant was her dd didn't like mince and maybe imagined a whole week on residential with her dd forced to eat it, even though we reassured her this wouldn't be the case.

If you have a reaction to something, is that not an intolerance then?

Belgo it's not up to anybody other than the child's HCPs and parents to decide whether a child's allergy is life-threatening. He or she is allergic. Maybe the next exposure will be the one that triggers the full anaphylactic reaction.

In each of my 3 dc's classes there is at least one child who carries an Epipen. Plus several others who need to avoid various allergens. That is enough to seem fairly 'common' to me.

MoonUnitAlpha, an allergy is an immune-mediated response (and can be fatal), an intolerance is not immune-mediated, and so the mechanism of an intolerance is different to an allergy (rather than a mild reaction being an intolerance and a severe reaction being an allergy, which is simply a common misconception).

My ds gets a red, blotchy rash and puffy eyes when he eats certain fruit - would you say this is an intolerance or just a reaction? It's not from contact.

Most allergic reactions are mild, thankfully. Annoying and sometimes painful, keeping you awake at night and making it hard to concentrate in a job or at school. But not actually dangerous in most people.

But of course potentially they could be life threatening, in fact anyone of us could potentially have a life threatening reaction to anything at any time. Fortunately this is rare, which is way it makes head line news.

I strongly suspect there are a lot more children in the UK walking around with epipens then there are in Belgium.

MoonUnitAlpha, in order to establish whether it was an allergy, it would need to be tested. The diagnosis of "allergy" is only usually made after observation of symptoms plus a positive allergy test (because allergy tests in themselves can give false positives).

and in very small children, allergy tests can sometimes give a false negative.

and it depends on the test as well. My dh had a false negative to a blood test and then went on to react to all allergens on the skin prick tests.

that's true- ds1 tested negative to peas, to only a week later end up sitting with swollen face and lips after eating peas. Thankfully it was mild enough that Piriton sorted it out.

I did ask my HV about it (ds is 6 months old) but she was as unhelpful as you would expect - said you can't be allergic to fruit but not to give him any just in case

Of course you can be allergic to fruit, you can be allergic to anything.

MoonUnit, I'm allergic to fruit, the only fruits I can eat are bananas and oranges, everything else causes the inside of my mouth to swell and itch.

Belgo, my allergies appeared from nowhere about 4 years ago and have got steadily worse. The reaction to pecans came out of the blue and, quite frankly, scared the crap out of me. To be unable to speak and struggling to breathe after 2 mouthfuls of something I had eaten with no problems all my life was terrifying.

I am far, far more cautious about what I feed other people's dcs now, regardless of whether I know if they have allergies.