by Nicole Wetherbee

Created on: August 19, 2009

Food allergies affect up to 6% of children and 3-4% of adults in the westernized world. My family, unfortunately, had to find out the hard way how devastating an allergic reaction can truly be.

Denny's Story

It was at the beginning of 1974 and my brother, Denny, was just under one when he sampled his first ever peanut butter cookie given to him by our grandfather. Denny turned blue within minutes. My mother rushed him to the hospital which, fortunately, was only two blocks away. He was revived and my mother was informed to make sure he avoided all peanut contact. They sent her on her way with a prescription form of anti-histamine that was to be kept in the refrigerator. That was it! No allergy education or additional precautionary measures. Just keep him away from peanuts was all she was told. Now in defense of the information she received, severe allergies in the 70's were not as common as they are today and not much education/treatment was given. My grandfather felt terrible, of course, but how could something like this be foreseeable in a family that had no knowledge about allergies or their dangers. So as a family, we made sure that Denny did not eat nuts. However, we still kept them in the house and used them in food, just separate from food that Denny would be eating. This in itself was a dangerous practice but once again the knowledge and education given at that time did not warrant alarm. The family was told that nuts in the house were okay as long as Denny did not ingest the allergen.

Around the age of two, Denny developed severe asthma. So severe that he was hospitalized often as a child and actually given the Catholic sacrament of anointing of the sick when he was twelve. The doctors did not expect him to live through the night. By the grace of God, he pulled through. He continued on with his allergic/asthmatic life but with a little relief. Things seemed to improve after his near-death bout with asthma.

Throughout the years as a teenager and young man, he would periodically come into contact with peanut/peanut butter/peas and would grab the trusty bottle of anti-histamine out of the fridge to combat the allergy. Most of the time the incidents occurred away from the house like at school or a friend's place so he would have make a trip home to get his medicine. Carrying medication with him was not something he practiced as his avoidance was thought to be good enough and if he was exposed it was never realized that it could

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