goodbye peanut butter

when beckett and i were in hawaii we went to a thai restaurant for dinner one night and i gave beckett some salad with peanuts on it. he didn't get the peanuts... i picked them out, but he broke out in hives all over his face. he didn't have other symptoms, and the dressing was vinegar based and he has the most sensitive skin, so i decided that was the issue. in the back of my mind though, i was a little nervous that maybe, maybe, maybe it was the peanuts.

the thing is... i think it is annoying when kids have peanut allergies. first of all, i don't understand why it is on the rise... why every school is a peanut free zone... why peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a lunch meal of the past. i also feel like people make peanut allergies seem way worse than other allergies (really... it's because they are). once i flew on a flight and they didn't pass out peanuts because there was somebody on the flight who claimed to have such a severe peanut allergy that peanut dust being in the air could cause him to go into anaphylactic shock. really? (i still think that is extreme. AND you have to ingest peanuts to go into shock, if you have the allergy.) also, peanut butter is SO good and a life with no peanut butter cups is a half life. how sad for those people. that's why i ate 47,000 peanut butter sandwiches when i was pregnant. so beckett would be suuuuper immune to the allergy. really, i just replaced lunch meat with peanut butter... i have no idea what causes allergies. also, neither do doctors it turns out. 

last night i went shopping at trader joes and had a fun idea... i bought the peanut butter sandwiches for beckett to try. his first delicious peanut butter experience. i would give them to him right when he got up from nap because you should always introduce a new food right after a child wakes up to give them prime awake time to react to it, just in case. beckett loved them! of course... they are delicious. and he was fine after he ate them! no hives all over the face. great news!

thirty minutes later, beckett was playing with a puzzle on the ground and projectile vomited. it was shocking to everybody, including beckett. we cleaned everything up and i sat with b on the couch and he seemed okay. we thought he was maybe getting sick. another thirty minutes later, we sat down to dinner and beckett started developing a cough. he crawled into my lap and i noticed his breathing was super shallow and raspy. i put my hand on his chest and he was working hard for every breath he took. we ran out the front door and headed to the er. matt said if somebody had come into our house they would have thought we were raptured... with our full meal just sitting on the table.

when we got to the er, matt dropped beckett and me off and they rushed us back once they knew he was having a peanut reaction. the doctor came right in and said he was definitely reacting and in anaphylactic shock. his throat was closing up and if it closed off completely he would need a tracheotomy. eeeeek. that was scary news. they gave him an epi-pen shot (which he screeeeeamed over, it was a huge needle) and also used an epi-nebulizer and got an iv put in. he also had to have his heart rate monitored because of all the steroids. beckett thought the iv was very hurt-ie... he super hated it. he got benadryl, an additional steroid, and stomach medication in the iv. after the shot, his breathing was almost instantly better. thank goodness.

the benadryl made beckett really tired for about 10 seconds and then he just got weird and loopy. we had to stay at the hospital for monitoring for a few hours, to make sure he didn't relapse when the epi-pen wore off... so we didn't get discharged until after midnight. during that time beckett drank an obscene amount of apple juice. also, our doctor shift changed while we were there and the new doctor came in and said, "hey you guys, i'm brock." and i wanted to say, "hey, brock. you should probably introduce yourself with your last name because... your name is brock. and i can't really think of a name that sounds less professional." rude of me? yes. sorry if you named your son brock and were hoping he would be a successful doctor that went by his first name at all times. 

after the hospital, we had to go to a 24 hour pharmacy and pick up benadryl for b to have every 4 hours and epi-pens to keep in case of an emergency. beckett was a crazy insane person by this point from lots of drugs and no sleep. he just ran around walgreens pointing at things and dancing and shaking vitamin bottles and trying to open packs of halls cough drops. good lord. when we got home, we gave him more benadryl and tried to go through his bed time routine, but of course he slept with us... so we could stare at him and make sure he was breathing. he woke up this morning and cuddled ford and was totally fine. he ate a ridiculously large amount of food today and now we are back to normal. except we have to check everything he eats for peanuts... and make sure everybody knows about his allergy... and practice using an epi-pen... and find a pediatric allergist... and work on being those parents that slap peanut butter sandwiches out of other kids' hands because they were eating it too close to our kid. that's right people... our house is a peanut free zone, starting now... so, yeah. almond butter, here we come.