Handling Allergy and Multiple Food Intolerances

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The worst part, aside from seeing my son in pain? People think I’m making this stuff up.

I see the side-eyes, the raised eyebrows, the shared eye-rolls. Don’t think I didn’t notice that head shake, or catch the placating tone you used when you said, “Sure, I know you said your son can’t have gluten, and what else again? There are so many I can’t keep track.”

Or maybe you tell me that really, he can have one Peep. Just one. It wouldn’t hurt him, would it?

Well, he won’t go into anaphylactic shock, that’s for sure. But the reaction he has from eating something like one Peep just isn’t worth it.

I’ve seen him have anaphylactic responses to bee stings, which means he has symptoms like itchy rash, throat swelling, and low blood pressure. I’m lucky that Red 40, a food dye additive found in many products like Peeps, doesn’t puff him up with hives or stop his breathing (yes, that’s 100% possible).

bee allergy
My boy having an anaphylactic reaction to bee stings

Generally, people use the term “allergy” interchangeably with “intolerance,” but they aren’t quite the same. I’ll spare you the science, but an intolerance is milder, with more diverse symptoms, and generally not life-threatening. My son has a bee allergy. He has food intolerances.

Calling them intolerances doesn’t make them any easier, though.

No, ingesting dairy doesn’t mean I have to hold him down and stab an epi pen in his thigh. Instead, even a trace amount of dairy gives him anywhere from 2-4 days of tantrums, whining, screaming, hitting, and a total lack of impulse control. You know when you tell your kid not to do something, and they look at you and do it anyway, because they can’t stop themselves? Think that, unendingly. He can’t function on Day 1. Day 2, he requires lots of supervision. By Day 3, it’s only bad when he’s tired or hungry.

Gluten does the same thing. So does soy. Artificial dye’s even worse, as is, weirdly, Benedryl. Too many nuts? Tantrums. Extra bananas? Hitting and yelling. Citrus fruits will give him a rash that looks like the worst cold sore ever, and orange juice makes him vomit from acid reflux.

It’s a giant pain, but we cope much more easily than you’d think.

We cook at home. I read the labels on everything – and we can’t manage most processed foods. Eating out can be tricky, but luckily my son likes hot dogs and hamburgers (no bun) and french fries – I learned the hard way that most veggies get a hefty pat of butter on the way out of the kitchen, and lots of waiters don’t realize that butter = milk.

These days, everyone’s gone gluten free, so we eat as many carbs as the average family – bread, cakes, rolls, waffles – but with rice flour instead of wheat. I’ve developed some mean baking skills. And we get by. My no-butter, no-egg, no-wheat biscuits are a reasonable facsimile of the real thing.

Because no milk and no dye means we can’t have lots of candy, I hoard the candy my son can eat: Earth’s Best gummies and lollipops, dark chocolate, certain brands of marshmallows made without blue dye. Easter meant eggs filled with chocolate-covered raisins.

Yep, it’s sort of depressing. But we manage. I’d rather feed him dark chocolate than deal with tantrums. I’m grateful to be armed with information that helps us manage his issues, rather than needing to resort to medications or psychiatric diagnoses for help.

Yes, I wish he could have just one Peep, too. But it’s not worth it.

5 COMMENTS

  1. We are one week in taking the dyes out of our three year olds diet. He still has his energy but he has stopped being mean. And we’ve noticed a a change in his talking. He was an early and fast talker and then he cut back and now that we cut it out his talking had picked up. It must have been the extra juice I was letting him have

  2. Thank you for sharing your son’s story. My son is 14 months old and we are trying to figure out his triggers. Did you discover all this by trial and error? Did allergy testing help? We ve done some skin testing with reactions to wheat fish shrimp cashew peanut and mild to eggs. We go for my testing in a few weeks. Ours is crazy itchy rashes no amount of steroid cream will touch. We have been gluten free for 3 weeks. I just want someone to tell us what he’s allergic to so we can fix it.

    • We basically did trials with various foods. We had to go gluten-free for my second son and noticed our oldest’s behavior improved significantly.

  3. Wow thanks for sharing! I’m sure that can be very hard! Poor little guy! The one blessing I see is at least you all get to eat healthier since most processed foods aren’t healthy anyway. I’m sure that’s only a small conciliation to having to be so careful with what he eats!

  4. My daughter has a severe peanut allergy, and it took a very long time for my family to “get it”. Hers is very sensitive – she will have anaphylaxis from eating, and if she touches anything that has traces, she breaks out (like, get her home, shower, benedryl, if that doesn’t take care of the rash we have a running rx for something stronger that will, if it doesn’t get taken care of, she will get to the point where she is puffing up). It’s amazing to me how many people try to tell me things like “You need to desensitize her!” and “There are so many therapies out there, I’m SURE you could fix this!” or, one of my personal favorites “We couldn’t live with out that. Seriously, if my kid every had that allergy, I don’t think I could do it.” Well, if it’s a choice between your peanut butter sandwich and your child’s life, I think you could. We found out when my daughter was a year old (on her first birthday, back when they used to say you could have peanut butter at 1), and after the initial shock and influx of information, you get used to it. It’s like anything else. You learn to look at labels every. single. time. Because manufacturers will change their facility, and suddenly something that was good, is not anymore. The hard part is dealing with other people who don’t think it’s serious, who think that you’re being over protective. “It doesn’t have ACTUAL peanuts in it. Just traces. She can have this”. Uh huh. Cause I want to play Russian Roulette with my kid’s life. Yeah. Great plan there, sparky. I will say, on the flip side, some people are wonderful. Like when I wanted to take her for a special dessert without the boys (she has 3 brothers), and we went somewhere that I was pretty sure was safe, but the waitress brought us their complete allergies guide to all of their foods, and helped us figure out if what we wanted was okay. Or the time my husband called Marble Slab, because he wanted an ice cream cake for us for Mother’s day, but didn’t know if it was possible. And the manager went through and scrubbed everything again, made our cake first with fresh made ice cream, ingredients that were safe (and fresh from the manufacturer, so no chance of mixture with other ingredients), and we got to have our first “not made by me” cake in 3 years, with no reactions. Or when my Mom died, and a friend made sure that any food brought in was completely safe, so that I didn’t have to be worried about what was coming in that we couldn’t touch. Some people get it, and with those that don’t, it makes me so much more thankful for those that do.

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