Why I started this blog (A little bit about my family)

My name is Britny. I have had allergies all of my life. I thought I had one of the worst cases due to the amount of things that would set me off. Little did I know, I was very wrong. My son was born in 2007, 6 months later we learned of the TRUE meaning of an allergy.

When I was in school there was 1 person I knew with a peanut allergy. Our class was told to wash our hands when walking into the classroom because we were the class after lunch hour. There would be days when some kids I knew would sneak through the line and sit down because they hadn't had a peanut butter sandwich that day so there was no way anyone would ever know. Thank goodness we never found out first hand how allergic our classmate was. But, it is ignorance like that that makes this world so scary for some.

We have all heard of allergies. Some of us get the sniffles in the summer or an itchy mouth/tummy ache from eating a raw apple. But, food allergies that are not merely an intolerance are much worse. On that day in 2008 when I had fed my son a baby food jar labeled Macaroni and Cheese, our lives changed forever. While feeding him his first baby food meal, he loved it. We were happy and excited to finally let him have something outside of carrots and green beans. As I wiped the mess of cheese off of his face I noticed little red dots. I thought nothing of it of course because 'What baby doesn't have imperfections?'. I began to feed him some spinach when he started to cough. Thinking he was choking i rubbed his back trying to help him calm down. He then started to gag so I ran him into the bathroom so he could vomit in the sink but there was no vomit. I started to really notice that something was not right. His face was turning colors as I ran around the house trying to soothe him. At that point we figured that it was an allergy and decided to drive to the hospital ( We were about 5-10 minutes away) I'm sitting in the back seat talking to my son with tears running down my face trying to keep him awake when he stops crying.(Silence) "HE'S NOT BREATHING!!" I screamed. My husband starts running all of the red lights as we regret not calling an ambulance.We finally make it to the ER, bursting through the doors in a loud panic and being surrounded by nurses. That was the day we found out that our son has food allergies.

After that day, we went to see an allergist. He tested him and discovered that he was allergic to the milk and eggs in the mac 'n' cheese. A couple of years later we tested him and discovered that he was also allergic to peanuts and tree nuts. So, living with allergies is an everyday struggle in our family. That is why I wanted to start this blog. It is nice to find people you can relate with and can support you. Support is a HUGE part of living with allergies as an allergic child, adult or parent.