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Allergies

Coping with food intolerance and allergies

by Julia R

My son is allergic to Kiwi fruit.
It all started when he was about two and a half years old.
It was a Saturday evening..my husband was at work (he worked Continental shifts) and I was at home alone with my three very young toddlers. We were watching TV, I'd got myself a grapefruit and some kiwi fruit for the kids. They liked it when I cut the Kiwi's in half and gave them tiny spoons to scoop out all the soft fruit. My son was a slow developer in his early years and he hardly spoke to adults even myself, although he would spend hours talking "gobbledygook" with his baby sister.

He started rubbing his eyes so I got a cloth and wiped his hands and his face thinking he may have got some grapefruit on his hands and it was making his eyes sting. He went back to watching the TV but kept on rubbing his eyes and getting very whiny, I tidied up and came back into the room and found he had gone into hiding under his blanket. Both his sisters were fussing around him going under the blanket and squealing and I thought they were playing. Then my eldest daughter turned and said that her brother's eyes "looked funny". I took the blanket away and got the shock of my life. My son's face had swollen so much that he was barely recognizable. The bridge of his nose was so full of fluid that he had no eye sockets and his eyes were so puffed that all that was visible was too slits. He was crying, his sisters were shocked and began to scream and cry. It was one of the most panic stricken moments of my life, I tried to appear calm and calm down the two girls at the same time trying to reassure my son that everything was OK. He obviously knew something was wrong but it wasn't until the other two started screaming that he started getting really upset.
We didn't own a car at the time and my husband had to catch two buses to get home, which would take at least an hour and a half....my neighbors on all sides and front were all old ladies in their 80's and 90's. My mum had gone off for the weekend and I had no other family with transport that lived local.
I rang my husband and got him to leave work but in the meantime I became more and more concerned about my son. His face seemed to be swelling more and he was now crying uncontrollably. I was tempted to ring for an ambulance but decided against it and rung the emergency number of my local doctors surgery. The emergency doctor came on to talk to me and asked lots of questions about my sons condition...the main concern seemed to be


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