Do you ever wonder why you never see the words allergy free on our products or website?

I began using the term allergy friendly about 6 years ago and ever since then have been correcting those who refer to Nonuttin’ products as allergy free.  While I can understand that like “gluten free”, it’s a quick and easy way to refer to products that are designed for those with food allergies, it doesn’t communicate the true reality of food allergies. Read more »

I’m here to tell you a secret;  traveling is not all glamor.  Hard to believe, isn’t it?

I remember when my kids were little and my husband had to travel for work conferences.  I’d be exhausted when he came home and he had the nerve to be exhausted too!  How could that be when he’d had a hotel to go to sleep in, meals provided, banquets to attend, no children to wake him up in the middle of the night, no carting the kids back and forth between childcare plus work?  Now, I’ve discovered why as the shoe is on the other foot.

Because it is my company that I travel for, no one is planning my dinners for me at lovely restaurants when I’m away.   And, like many of you with food allergies and intolerances, I cart my own food with me so that I can eat safely and healthfully and try to book hotels with a microwave and fridge wherever I can.  I’ve been traveling so much in the last 3 months that I haven’t spent more than 10 days at home at a time.  At one point, I looked out of my plane at the city beyond and forgot where I was (Vancouver)!

So you might ask, why do I do it?   Here are the things that keep me going:

The eleven year old boy at the Canadian Celiac Association’s National Conference in Winnipeg who mowed through all of our samples once his mom had determined all of our products were safe for his Celiac disease, peanut allergies, egg allergies and dairy allergies.  What a smile on his face and his mom’s too!

The lady at Choices gluten free fair in White Rock who found out we’re free of sulfites and dairy.  She told me that she was in love with our company. 

The store owner who came up to our booth at the Canadian Health Food Association’s Expo West who said she can’t keep our Energy Explosion trail mix on the shelf, people love it so much.

The lady who’s been a customer for years who introduced herself at the Celiac Disease Foundation’s Annual Conference in Los Angeles in May.  It felt like I was meeting an old friend.

But it’s the same in all that we do isn’t it?  We handle all of the education and anxiety necessary to deal with our family’s food allergies and at times it can be really overwhelming.  We plough on, sometimes just putting our heads down and marching ahead because it’s really all we can do.  But then we get those moments of bright light; that small thing that may not mean much to someone not in our shoes but can mean the world to us.  A new safe product, a medical situation handled well, excitement over finding someone else who really “gets it”.

Small things – they’re really what makes the world go round.

It’s bad enough that we need to convince people in our lives that food allergies besides peanut can create life threatening reactions too.  But what happens when even allergy researchers believe that certain food allergies are not as serious? Read more »

I find Valentine’s Day stressful with food allergies.  In the past, when our allergic child was in elementary school, I found it to be the most stressful day of all.  It all came to a head when Megan was in grade 4 and Valentine’s Day became a food buffet of everything she couldn’t eat laid out in front of her.  Score in her head?  Other kids:  30 treats,  Me:  2 Read more »

On Friday night our daughter had her first food allergic reaction in 9 years.  It was also the first time she self injected and the first time she had a reaction at a friend’s without an adult present.  Her big sister also experienced the first time she was present at a reaction that she remembers.  And it was the first time I was out and received a frantic phone call about a reaction.

All in all, a lot of firsts that I would rather have done without.  While we have learned a lot from the incident including phoning 911 before phoning Mom and that all of the training that we’d done was successful, the fear box has been opened.  You know, the one you stuff all of your allergic parent fears into so that you can lead a somewhat normal life? Read more »

My husband and I just got back from Calgary yesterday after a quick trip to help support our best friends.  This trip has truly made me appreciate that our life is really pretty good; a feeling I hope to affect my perspective for some time.

It all started last Wednesday with a phone call from my friend Erica who was calling from the Children’s Hospital in Calgary after their daughter was flown to the hospital earlier in the week.  As of that Wednesday, they’d received a diagnosis of Stage 4 cancer.  I was blown away with the news, trying to listen to the details from Erica when all I wanted to do was cry.

We then arranged everything that night to fly to Calgary on the weekend to help support our friends while they dealt with their life changing completely in an instant.  My parents took our girls, my sister in Calgary arranged to pick us up at the airport and make one of their cars available to us for the weekend.  We cancelled all of our kids’ weekend activities and cancelled our previous plans to go away for the weekend with other friends.  It’s amazing how everyone was fantastic and supported us to make sure we could head out quickly.

On the Thursday before we left, we received the good news that the cancer had been identified as Hodgekins.  Hard to believe that good news is knowing what kind of cancer is present but Hodgekins has a very high recovery rate and it really was the best kind of cancer to hope for.

On the way to take our daughters to my parents and head out to the airport on Friday, we received a call from our alarm company that our house was being broken into and that the police were being dispatched to our house.  At first my husband and I just looked at each other in disbelief but then we started to laugh while our children in the back seat thought that we were cracking up.  But really… we were on our way to a situation that was so much bigger than the physical objects in our house.  We decided to laugh rather than rant and it turns out that it was actually just a false alarm.

In the end, we were thankful for our time with our friends and their daughters because while there were times to cry, there was a lot of laughter too.  It really drove home that despite dealing with food allergies in our house daily and the fear that can sometimes bring, we’re all  very lucky to be blessed with good health.  It’s all about perspective.

Our allergic child is 13 today.  Like all parents, I feel that sometimes 13 years have zipped past while other times I feel like time has stood still.  I still feel like a young woman but the obvious signs such as 2 teenagers in the house now, not to mention the mirror, would prove otherwise.

I do find that my husband and I are different from many other parents in the way that we celebrate each birthday of our youngest child; we celebrate that we got her to another birthday unharmed.  At first, I thought that we were an anomaly and I wasn’t telling too many people how we viewed these birthday milestones.  But it turns out that other parents do this too.  A couple of our staff members are like that because one has a child with diabetes while another almost lost her child 4 years ago when he was brain injured.

I suppose it’s a little morbid to think this way but it makes sense when you think about what we live with every day.  Even though we live each day with the appearance of being  “normal”, there’s always that niggling little fear of a life threatening reaction that we tuck away in a little compartment so that we don’t drive ourselves crazy with the what if? scenarios.

  So, while it might be weird, I’m really happy my daughter’s having a birthday this year and I’m hoping for many more to come.

I always thought that when my daughters reacted to milk as infants and that followed with more allergies to peanuts, tree nuts and kiwi, that we were the first of our extended family to go through this journey.  While we may be the only ones with an anaphylactic response to date, traveling and talking to both sides of my family while on holidays over the last several weeks has brought other food allergies to light.

First, my 60 year old aunt just got diagnosed with peanut allergies.  After several bouts of terrible stomach pains after a late night snack of peanuts, testing last month revealed a “new” allergy to peanuts.  It sure makes me wonder what’s going on with our immune systems that allergies are increasing on both the front end of our life spans as well as the latter part.

Second, at our recent family reunion on my husband’s side, we met up again with my husband’s cousin who has 3 children, all allergic to milk.  Upon further discussion, that cousin, her brother and my husband all feel sick when ingesting clam chowder and all of them have had reactions with swelling eyes while eating shrimp.  My husband has avoided these items for years simply because they made him feel so sick as a child.  However, we now know that when he has red, swollen eyes, it inevitably leads back to shrimp.  None of these people have ever been formally diagnosed, they’ve just automatically avoided shellfish due to their experiences.

My cousin reminded me that her father (my maternal uncle), is also allergic to shrimp, a fact he discovered in his 30s when he order chicken balls that turned out to be shrimp, not chicken.  Luckily, as a pharmacist, he understood what was going on and was able to get some antihistamines on board.  This was over 30 years ago when these kinds of reactions were not the norm.

And now, our youngest has added another allergy to the list, albeit an easier one to control.  While stealing a  chickpea from her sister’s salad last Thursday night, she experienced itching at the back of her throat.  Given that she’s allergic to peanuts, this new development isn’t exactly surprising since chickpeas are a legume.  So no more hummus and chickpeas in this house.

Can you trace back any incidents in your family over the last 30 years that could be attributed to food allergies?  Is it that they were always there but we either didn’t pay much attention or that those individuals didn’t like the way they felt when they ate a particular food and so instinctually avoided it?  Maybe they’ve always been there but weren’t as severe as anaphylaxis or that larger amounts (rather than traces) would only cause the reaction.

For those moms who blame themselves for their child’s food allergies, maybe we can let go of that and start attaching blame a couple of generations back.  Sounds good to me.

I am childless!  After sending one child off on a plane on Saturday and delivering another to her grandparents for a trip to auntie’s house in Calgary on Tuesday, our house is really quiet.  And for someone who is now supposed to be eating ice cream until midnight and bouncing on the bed, I find myself somewhat rudderless.

Gone are all of the electronic noises, teenage groans and sibling arguments.  I no longer have to prod children to complete chores, I simply have to do them myself.  No more fighting for time on the family computer, the phone isn’t being used when I want it.  But it’s too quiet.  I got a call from my allergic child last night since I’d requested she phone once she arrived after the 3 day journey.  She had the audacity to want to get off the phone quickly so she could rejoin her uncle’s birthday party.  Hmmph!

As my husband said at dinner last night, “so this is what it will be like in a few years”.  I’m not so sure I’m liking that too much.  Because all of this silence isn’t exactly worry free you know.  Tween and teen children (allergic and otherwise) in the care of other people and perhaps taking on personal responsibility?  That would mean I’ve done my job well and they don’t need me anymore.  Ack!

Maybe it’s time to go get that ice cream out.

I’m not sure what to think about a recent clip that I viewed on YouTube showing a young man having an allergic reaction to peanut.  I had just come home from holidays and had several enewsletters waiting for me as I subscribe to many from the allergy and gluten free worlds.  One particular enewsletter had a link to a clip showing a peanut reaction.  I thought it might be informative for both my husband and my allergic child and so forwarded the enewsletter to my home address for viewing later that night.

When I got home, I discovered that my husband had already watched the clip and that my allergic child had refused to watch so I sat down to watch it by myself.  As I was watching, my husband came in to sit beside me and guage my reaction.  At the end I was really quite disturbed.

You may have seen this clip but if you have not, the young man has a reaction over several hours after accidentally ingesting a peanut candy bar hidden in a cake.  His filming over these hours shows him gradually having a skin reaction (hives and flushing), stomach pain and vomiting, facial swelling and difficulty breathing.   I’ve seen this in my own child so, while not easy to watch, it was not surprising to me.  What was surprising was that after indicating he was having difficulty breathing, he went and “passed out” on the couch for several hours.

It would appear from the opening and closing remarks made by this young guy that his reason for posting the reaction on YouTube was to educate others as to what happens when those with food allergies have reactions and why they should be taken seriously.  So why, you ask, would I find this upsetting?  Because I think that the opposite of his educational intention is clearer in the clip.  His accidental message is that he can essentially “ride out” the allergic reaction and that after having systemic reactions, it’s okay for an allergic person to go lie down.

If you read the posted reactions to this clip, you’ll find other people asking the same questions that I did.  From his responses to those questions, it appears that he did have antihistamines and epi-pens available but it isn’t clear exactly what he used and when, if anything,  in the clip.  So the message that clearly comes across is that a wait and see and lie down on the couch approach is a good idea.  Not in my book!  So in the end, I’m very glad my allergic child didn’t see the clip and I don’t want her to except perhaps to point out at which time in the clip that using the epi-pen and calling 911 would have been a good idea.

After the clip, there are several other posted videos on allergies but I couldn’t bring myself to watch any of them.  Not if what I was going to see was potentially the last video that person would make.