Did you know that May 12-18 of this year is Food Allergy Awareness week? Well I did! This post may be a couple days late from the kick off at the beginning of the week but is no less important. Let me lay some food allergy stats our there for you because it really is astounding. This all come courtesy for fare.org.

-About 8% of children, which is about 6 million kids, are living with food allergies. Most of them are young children.

-Boys are more likely to develop food allergies than girls.

-Allergies to peanuts, tree nuts, fish, or shellfish are generally lifelong allergies.

-From a study that was conducted in 2008, the CDC found the food allergies rose by 18% from the years of 1997-2007. And peanut allergies have tripled in that time frame as well.

-Every 3 minutes a food allergy reaction sends someone to the emergency department. This makes about 200,000 visits a year. Every 6 minutes that reaction is anaphylaxis.

-Teens and young adults with food allergies are more likely to die from fatal food induced anaphylaxis.

-If an individual has asthma, may have an increased chance of a severe or fatal food allergy reaction.

Crazy right? Until I started looking into it, I never realized all the people who had food allergies. And it isn’t just a kids problem. Plenty of adults have food allergies as well. Since it is awareness week, I have a food allergy themed giveaway coming up tomorrow but until then, if you want to do something or help some way, be sure to check out FARE.Org. You can donate or become more involved in helping fund research and awareness for food allergies!

Landon has had issues since birth. First it was eczema. We say a dermatologist, they gave us a 2.5% steroid cream to treat and told us to us a barrier protector(aquaphor) every where else on his skin. When Landon was 15 months old, I was eating some peanut butter toast. Landon asked for a bite so I gave him one. At the time the recommendation was 1 year to try nut products.

Less than two hours later we were in the ER with eczema flair up, wheezing, and swelling of the face. Needless to say it was a long night and Landon hasn’t had a peanut product since. Around a year and a half he also got bronchitis for the first time.

We moved to our apartment a little after Landon turned two. We saw a doctor soon after for Check ups and such. She was an asshole quite frankly. We asked her for an allergy test because Landon had a couple incidents where he didn’t eat any peanut products and he didn’t eat anything that could have cross contamination with peanuts, so we didn’t know why he was having reactions that warranted hospital visits.

She said that she thought it was “unnecessary and not needed”. I can’t remember the exact reason why but instead of letting him get tested she just gave us Epipens. We were dropped as patients since we are currently a no vaccine family. But it didn’t matter because we were leaving anyway. She was not a doctor for us.

Since we hadn’t found one yet, and Landon had gotten a terrible case of bronchitis we were again off to the ER. He was having such a hard time breathing that his chest was retracting. If you don’t know what that is you can look up “retractions breathing” on youtube and there are a few videos.

The ER referred us to a physician to check up with in a couple days. We have been going to him since. This was about a year ago. He has given us Epipen refills and his steroid cream refills. It wasn’t until after a second episode of lung problems and another check up that he gave us a referral to a pulmonologist for his eczema, allergy and possible asthma. Unfortunately thas was in August or so and there was a HUGE wait list. It wasn’t until December when Landon had such bad retractions that he had to have an hour long nebulizer treatment with a steroid and albuterol, that I called again to see if he had any openings.

What we carry at all times

Landon’s appointment was this last Tuesday. It couldn’t have come at a better time because he was just getting sick so the doctor was able to hear how bad it gets so fast. He was awesome! We were given a prescription a for higher quality chamber for his inhaler, a liquid 5 day steroid, a refill on Epipens, a refill on hydrocortisone cream for his eczema, and an inhaler steroid called Flovent to do two puffs twice a day with. He also wrote a script for a blood draw allergy test.

Our extra stuff, minus aquaphor

It was like this Doctor answered all our prayers on getting Landon everything we needed. He also educated us on inhaler use. He told us the first four of any of our inhalers were in effective and that after 200 of the albuterol it would be useless because there isn’t enough medicine. Nobody else bother to tell us these things. Our medical bag that we carry around every time we leave the house is a little bigger but I’m so glad we have all that we need just in case! It was a long wait but I’m so glad that he has everything that should keep him healthy!