Guess I owe an update huh? Noah appears to be crazy allergic to peanuts. We go
in for testing on the 28th to see just what it is that triggers him, but until
then we are nut and bean free. He’s been doing really well since then, but
Jessi and I are pretty much a wreck. Try going to the store sometime and only
getting stuff that doesn’t have nuts in it, or that wasn’t cooked in peanut
oil, or that doesn’t have beans in it, or that wasn’t prepared on equipment
that also prepares nuts. It’s very, very difficult. You can pretty
much forget about eating out. The amount of vigilance that we have to use
to just do everyday things is really exhausting. So far Jessi and I have done
pretty good, but I think it’s starting to take a bit of a toll on us.
We have put Epi pens pretty much everywhere that he is going to be. We each
carry one and his daycare has them too. Now that we are a bit removed from
the situation, I can recount what happened on the 28th.
I had been oncall the night before so I was at home in bed when daycare called
at about 10:30 saying that Noah was having a reaction to his medication (he had
been on Keflex for 5 or 6 days for an eye infection), I told them I was on my
way. I got up and called our Dr while I was getting dressed. About 3 minutes
had passed and daycare called back saying they are very worried about him.
Before I could even ask a question, they said he just started throwing up and
is having a hardtime breathing so they are calling 911. I said ok and that I
would meet them and the ambulance there in like 4 minutes. I jumped in my
truck and put that poor girl through some serious abuse. I got from our house
to daycare in less then 4 minutes.
When I got there, the ambulance had already arrived and they had Noah inside.
I went up to see him but they wouldn’t even let me look through a window. Now
here is where we start having problems. I’m a large, well trained guy with an
infant soon in distress that I’m not even allowed to see. Things began to get
tense until one of the EMT’s heard that I had arrived and told the fireman to
let me in.
He was a mess, I didn’t even recognize him. His eyes were swollen so completely
shut that you couldn’t even see where one eyelid stopped and the other started.
His lips had swollen to the size of my index finger and had big bumps all over
them. His tongue was sticking out and was also swollen and bumpy. Even his
little fingers had swollen up. He was having a hard time breathing and there
was blood all over the place from them trying to put IV’s in and him getting
sick.
I couldn’t ride in the ambulance with him, so I followed them to the hospital.
The fireman told me to just hang back and not try to keep up but you can
imagine exactly how much of that advice I took to heart. When we got to the
Hospital, I had to park my truck and then get into the ER. They had transfered
him from one stretcher to another while I was on my way in and when I came
into his room I saw the old one. I remember thinking “man, whoever was on that
stretcher had a really bad day” cause it was very bloody and messed up. It
later dawned on me that it was his. The next couple of hours were spent
getting more IV’s into him (he had 3 total) and making sure he had oxygen. He
passed out at one point which was kinda scary, but the Dr’s assured me that it
was ok.
Poor Jessi this whole time had gone to the wrong hospital. She had forgotten
her phone that day, so she wasn’t getting any of the messages that I had been
leaving telling her to redirect. She fortunatly got there after most of the
swelling had gone away and he had woke back up. It was the most terrifying day
of my life. It’s such a struggle to find a balance now between protecting Noah
and living life with those images still in my head. I know that we will get to
what we will call normal again eventually, but right now it’s still pretty hard.
I hope that my family reads this and understands a little better just why we are
so paranoid right now with where we take him and what we give him. We aren’t even
sure yet if it was peanut’s or nuts in general that put him over the edge, we’ll
find that out on the 28th.