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If eating out is THAT dangerous to your health, bring your lunch to work and take it to your business lunch. YOUR life is NOT my fault!!!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Strel
Let me give you a timeline, in minutes.
-30 minutes. I'm arriving at a business lunch. You see, it isn't really possible or feasible for us to be shut-ins.
-25 minutes. I am ordering lunch, being very careful after decades of experience to steer clear of anything with nuts in it. I inform the waiter to tell the kitchen to make sure they watch out for cross contamination. I show him my MedicAlert bracelet so he will hopefully take me seriously and not cop an attitude like so many posters in this thread. I look him right in the eye and say very clearly that it really is a serious situation. If the waiter doesn't seem to be aware, I talk to the manager.
Yes, I have to do this every damn time I go out.
-15 minutes. Bubba is sprinkling pine nuts on the nut-free salad I ordered, or cutting meat on the same cutting board he used to chop cashews, or otherwise not taking the situation seriously.
-10 minutes. Waiter notices (or I do) that the nut-free salad has pine nuts on it. Bubba carefully picks out the pine nuts, but fragments and oils are already all over the food. Bubba sends it out anyway.
0 minutes. I eat a small but of lettuce tainted with a 0.5mm cubic particle of pine nut. That's smaller than the head of a pin, and completely invisible in a meal.
+5 seconds Reaction begins with a peculiar and unmistakeable sensation in my mouth, even before I have swallowed the particle. I spit everything out and rush to the bathroom./
+30 seconds. Reaction spreads to throat almost instantly. I begin to turn red.
+1 minute I am frantically rinsing, brushing, flossing and doing everything to get the allergen out of my mouth/teeth. Throat starts to burn and itch. Blood pressure begins to drop. I take an Alavert dissolving tablet and get out the TWO Epipens it's going to take to give me a fighting chance to get to the ER.
+3 minutes Leaving restaurant to got to hospital, cannot drive myself and an ambulance will take too long. Slam two spring-loaded needles into side of each legs for epinephrine dose that will hopefully get me to the hospital.
+5 minutes Uncontrollable and extremely painful esophageal spasms begin. Vomiting spreads the allergen around even more. I continue to turn red.
+10 minutes Cramps are unbearable, like a giant hand reaching up under your ribcage and squeezing all your organs. Everything locks up. Can still talk between spasms, but they are getting more frequent. All food vomited, but still heaving uncontrollably. Hives appear. Skin and scalp feel as if covered with biting fire ants.
+15 minutes In shock, having some difficulty breathing. Completely turned fire-engine red. Getting faint, blood pressure drops dramatically.
+20 minutes Temporarily blind from loss of blood pressure, if not unconsious already. Trachea is nearly closed off completely. Cannot breathe, and will die within minutes without massive dose of epinephrine, steroids and Benadryl. Convulsions from the massive epinephrine does make medical treatment difficult.
+25 minutes Possibly getting a tracheostomy from a very worried ER doc. Almost certainly unconcious at this point. Blood pressure dangerously low, tachycardia and irregular heartbeat. Not long now.
+30 minutes I'm dead, unless I've made it in time.
+8-12 hours Assuming I didn't die, I am treated to the pleasure of wracking cramps for the next day, on top being bedridden due to massive Benadryl overdose, making you dead tired but unable to sleep do to massive steroid dose.
+1 week Become Cushingoid due to steroids, suffer nightly insomnia and other steroid-related nasty side effects.
This is more or less exactly what has happened to me on more than one occassion, except obviously I didn't die. Yet. The doctors tell me it is the most likely cause of death that I will experience.
It can and does happen that fast. Now imagine that this is your child, and the school calls you to tell you your child is dead, because some other parents were "outraged" because the school had an allergy policy.
one should be even more wary of those that instantly dismiss any and all possible solutions as a matter of course. ah well, i'm sure those quacks at cambridge university have no idea what they're talking about.
right?
Have you ever read any of this internet medical advice? The reputable among them say "this does not replace the advice of your personal physician". You, who are not a medical doctor AFAIK, and who has never met this child, has decided on her allergy treatment?
Have you ever read any of this internet medical advice? The reputable among them say "this does not replace the advice of your personal physician". You, who are not a medical doctor AFAIK, and who has never met this child, has decided on her allergy treatment?
it's troubling that you, who are involved in medicine IIRC, would immediately dismiss promising treatments with such alacrity
I"m not dismissing it. I'm saying
1: research must be repeated over and over again before it becomes acceptable fact to base treatment on. Treatment doesn't change based on one research study. They have to be able to duplicate it, and triplicate it, then quadruplicate it, etc.
2. Everyone's personal case is different. These Cambridge researchers would be the first to agree with me.
I"m not dismissing it. I'm saying
1: research must be repeated over and over again before it becomes acceptable fact to base treatment on. Treatment doesn't change based on one research study. They have to be able to duplicate it, and triplicate it, then quadruplicate it, etc.
2. Everyone's personal case is different. These Cambridge researchers would be the first to agree with me.
Yeah, I talked with my son's allergist about the peanut challenge and that is pretty much reserved for a certain subset of patients at this point. My son's allergy tests come back with much too severe of a rating and they won't risk it. If he tested in the "moderate" zone, they would consider it.
I"m not dismissing it. I'm saying
1: research must be repeated over and over again before it becomes acceptable fact to base treatment on. Treatment doesn't change based on one research study. They have to be able to duplicate it, and triplicate it, then quadruplicate it, etc.
2. Everyone's personal case is different. These Cambridge researchers would be the first to agree with me.
sure it requires repeatability. but this is hardly the only desensitization study out there - there are dozens if not hundreds. i would certainly think that people with kids with severe allergies, or who have severe allergies themselves, would consider it noteworthy.
The school itself and all the students shouldn't have to suffer because of this girl....
quote]
How is keeping all peanut products away from this child making them suffer?
I certainly don't have the answer. She should be able to go to school and be safe but how to accomplish that I don't know.
Maybe in a perfect world, but as a parent (of a now grown woman), I can tell you (with a lot of experience under my belt), if my kids allergy was that serious, I wouldn't be putting her in harms way. I'd keep her at home, where I could better control her environment and safety. And perhaps, for the sake of all the kids learning a little bit of what tolerance is all about, there could be monthly visits by her classmates to her home. Seems to me, it's more reasonable to put the shoe on the other foot.
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