The Friday after the boys first birthday I had planned on making them a delicious tuna melt sandwich on warm biscuits. When I opened the tuna can I didn't like the way it looked. I thought, there is no way I am feeding this to the boys when they have their birthday party tomorrow! It is much too risky. I didn't want them to get sick from rotten tuna before their big event. So I gave them peanut butter. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Until moments later I noticed they both were red in the face. When I cleaned them up they appeared uncomfortable and the redness turned into hives. Large white bumpy hives all over their face and anywhere the peanut butter had touched them. On the arm, on the knee, hives traced the peanut butter areas. (The pictures are from the beginning when I first noticed a little redness. Ben is on top, it looks like he is praying!)
I was scared! I called the doctor, I called Billy, and I started praying that my boys would be ok. Not just for their first birthday party, but be healthy again. They wouldn't let me put them down because the pain was no fun. With a little Benadryl and some hydrocortisone they started to look "normal" again. I was so relieved.
Since the PB incident we have gone to an allergist. The boys are both allergic to eggs. On a scale from 0-5 they both are a 2. Which means they can eat eggs in baked goods, but not plain eggs. So no scrambled eggs or french toast for breakfast. The allergist thinks they will out grow this. As far as peanuts go, Will is a 2 and Ben is a 3. Which means no peanuts or tree nuts of any kind as they tend to be packaged in the same manufacturing plant as peanuts. The goal is to not have any sort of reaction to nuts and avoid them all together for now. If the boy's numbers decrease then we'll do a peanut test in the office to see if they succeed.
So we now carry around 4 EpiPens where ever we go just to be safe. We need 4 because each boy needs 2. They may not respond well with just one dose, so then we'd have to poke them again.
Josie started helping us with the boy's allergies. If she gets a snack from someone at music class or on a play date she will ask if it has peanuts because her brothers cannot have nuts. We went to the pumpkin patch yesterday and this worker helped us load pumpkins into our car. Josie said, "These are my brothers. This is Will. This is Ben. But they can't have annnnnnyyyy nuts!" I was beaming. For the rest of your lives boys... your big sister will always be there to protect you.
