Allergic Reaction Scare

After church a couple of Sundays ago (July 15th), Will and I ate lunch while Wayne went outside to cut the grass.  Around 1:00 pm, Wayne came in from finishing the yard and sat down in his chair to eat some hummus.  Will walked up to him wanting to eat some (as he always does when he sees us eating), and Wayne asked, "Can he have some hummus?"

"Sure," I replied.  After all, it was the plain kind...no nuts or anything strange in it.

Wayne gave Will a tiny little piece of pita with an even tinier amount of hummus on it.  Will loved it, and immediately went back for more two more times.  Then he suddenly acted like he didn't like it anymore and came over to me.  I picked him up and put him on the couch with me.  As he was climbing all over the couch, I noticed he started to cough and clear his throat some.  I looked at his mouth and saw that it was red all around it.

"Something's not right," I said to Wayne as I picked Will up in my arms.

When I pulled him closer, I realized he had broken out in hives all around his mouth and on his forehead.

Will has had skin reactions to things he has eaten (like when he had milk for the first time), but it has always been in the form of eczema.  Never hives.  And not this quickly.

We knew something was wrong.

He continued to cough and started gagging, dry heaving and drooling a lot.  We gave him some Zyrtec, and I called the doctor.  Because it was Sunday, I got the answering service.  I told the nurse that we had an Epi-pen, but I wasn't sure when to use it since he'd never had a reaction like this before.  After describing his symptoms to her, she told me I needed to call 911.

Ugh.  Really?

Wayne and I couldn't believe this was happening.  And with hummus of all things!

A fire truck showed up first and the firemen came inside to check Will out.  About 20-25 minutes had passed from the time Will first reacted and the hives were already gone.  I was thinking we were in the clear because he seemed to be doing better and the coughing/gagging had subsided some.

Then the ambulance arrived.  The paramedics came in and assessed Will.  I was really thinking at this point that he was better and we didn't need the ambulance.  One of the paramedics asked who was going to be riding with him, and I said, "Oh, we're going still?"

"Oh yeah," he replied in a no-doubt-about-it tone.

A few seconds later, Will started throwing up.  And I was good to get him in the ambulance.

We had to use his old car seat because his new one is too difficult to get out of the car, but he was fine it it.  They strapped it to the gurney and hooked him up to a few monitors.  They had me hold an oxygen mask in front of his face for a little while, but Will did not like that at all.  He eventually won that battle.

Wayne drove behind us.  It was hard for him because he didn't know what was going on in the ambulance.  He kept praying that the ambulance wouldn't suddenly turn the lights and siren on and start going faster.

When we finally got to Scottish Rite around 2:15 pm, Will was extremely tired and just laid on me as I carried him in.  Wayne's mom Betty met us at the hospital, and it was very comforting that she was standing there as I was getting out of the ambulance with Will.  We got checked into a room, and I noticed a rash had developed on him.  It started right under his chin and spread down onto his chest and stomach.

The doctor gave him Benadryl and a steroid and said we would be staying a couple of hours for observation. 

We hoped Will would take a nap, especially after the Benadryl.  Ha!  I guess we thought for a minute that we had a different child.  There was waaaay too much going on for Will to sleep.  And trying to keep him on a hospital bed with nothing more than a cartoon movie on the TV in the room didn't work too well for us.  He. was. wired.

A little while later, we noticed that the rash had gotten much worse, even though he'd had Benadryl and a steroid.

The doctor came in to look at it and said it was just the reaction running its course.  Poor Will had to be miserable though.  It looked and felt like a sunburn.  The doctor mentioned that the rash could come and go over the next few days, especially in the heat.  He gave us prescriptions for a steroid and a prescription-strength Benadryl.

After the meds started kicking in, Will began to look and feel better.  We were released around 4:30 pm, and Will fell asleep in the car right away.

The events of the day didn't hit me until just before we got home.  I was sitting in the back of the car next to Will, and suddenly realized how scary the day had been.  We've known for a year now that he has a severe allergy to peanuts.  We found that out last July.  And we have done a really good job of avoiding peanuts.  We always ask anyone who eats peanuts around Will to wash his or her hands and mouth before touching him, and we do the same.  We've also known that one day, he will accidentally eat one.  And we will have to deal with his reaction.  The scary part is hearing about or reading stories like this one.  Now, Will doesn't have only one allergy that could be life-threatening.  As a parent, that realization is a tough pill to swallow.  I'm so thankful for my cousins who have sons older than Will with peanut allergies.  They've given me a lot of comfort and good advice.  My cousin Dawn is allergic-as-allergic-can-get to peanuts herself, so she has been a great source of encouragement for me as well.

Wayne says all the time, "You know it's going to happen one day, so get ready."

I never in a million years thought it would happen with hummus.

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We went to the allergist this past Tuesday to see if we could figure out what made him react like that.  The doctor tested Will for sesame and chickpea since those were the two main allergenic foods in the ingredients besides soy.  We know he's not allergic to soy because he eats soybeans and drinks soy milk.  I cook his vegetables in canola oil to help him gain weight, so it's not that either.  We knew it wasn't the pita because all it has is wheat, and he eats that all the time.  He also retested him for peanuts and all tree nuts. 

Yep.  Still very allergic to peanuts.  (The huge hive around the "C".)

 

The skin test for sesame was negative.  They didn't have one for chickpea, so we had to walk over to Scottish Rite to do a chickpea blood test.  We don't know the results of the blood work yet, but if it comes back negative, the doctor said he will order a chickpea skin test to try.  If that's negative, I don't know what we'll do.  The label for the hummus doesn't say it was produced in a plant with peanuts, so cross-contamination isn't very likely.

The allergist did say that Will's reaction was anaphylactic and not to wait to use the Epi-pen if it happens again.  I'm confused on that though because the paramedic said to only use it as a last resort, if we see him physically struggling to get air. 

I hope we never have to experience that. 

Anyone else had a similar reaction to hummus?