We first learned of our son, Devin's, peanut allergy when he was 20 months old.  I had picked him up from the sitter's house to find him with hives across the side of his face.  The sitter said that he had a bite of his older brother's peanut butter and jelly sandwich at 12 noon and had thrown it up, but then had been fine. It was at 4 pm that I arrived. I immediately knew something was not right and drove him to the Emergency Room. They administered a double dose of Benadryl and an oral steroid and suggested he see an allergist for a peanut allergy.

At the allergist's office they did a skin prick test and sure enough, on a scale of 0-4 he scored a 4+ for a severe allergy to peanuts. He also showed an allergy to almonds, cats, and dogs.

So, we got our EpiPens and put together a "medicine bag" that we also filled with
Benadryl and his inhaler (we were also trying to rule out asthma) and began carrying it wherever he went. We did some reading and considered ourselves educated.  That was until this past Monday when he was 22 months old.

This past Monday, our family went to visit my sister and her family. While looking for a snack in the pantry for my oldest, she noticed that Devin was chewing something and asked if I had given him anything. I said no and almost left it at that, figuring he just grabbed a piece of candy. But then I thought maybe it was a Starburst and he was eating it with the wrapper on (as he usually does!). So I figured I better go check. In my hand, he spit out a chewed up piece of food that I did not recognize. When I showed it to my sister, she said - "I think that's a peanut" as she realized that there were peanuts on her bottom pantry shelf.

I decided to stay calm. He seemed alright. My husband said we should use the EpiPen right away, and I said no and decided to just give him a dose of Benadryl from the medicine bag and keep an eye on him... I mean his first reaction didn't happen until a couple hours later and it was just mild hives right?

Well, about 10 minutes later he started to vomit pretty badly. We cleaned him up and settled him down.  He was sneezing a lot and had a runny nose. It STILL didn't dawn on me what was happening. I didn't know vomiting was a symptom of an allergic food reaction. I thought maybe the Benadryl upset his stomach, or maybe he was getting stuffed up from my sister's cats (since he also has a cat allergy) and gagged on some mucous.  We decided to go home to give him a bath and clean up.

About 3 minutes into our ride home, he looked really sleepy and started closing his eyes, but then he started vomiting really bad again in his car seat.  But this time, he also started wheezing and coughing with a croupy sound.  I screamed at my husband to pull over and reached back to unbuckle him and pull him up into the front seat. We grabbed his inhaler from his medicine bag and gave him a puff to help with the wheezing (still did not use the EpiPen), which helped settle him down again.  My husband took charge and said "We're going to the emergency room".

So, we sped to the emergency room with the hazards on and me holding Devin in the front seat.  When we arrived at the Emergency Room the doctor asked if we had an EpiPen and had we used it.  I told him we did have one, but we hadn't used it. Immediately, I knew that we should have.  So, they administered an Epi shot, oral steroids, Benadryl, and a breathing treatment.  He was fine within about 15 minutes.  They kept us there for an additional 2 hours to keep an eye on him and then we were discharged with a prescription for oral steroids for 5 days and a suggestion of Benadryl and his inhaler for 3 days.

What a night.  I learned ALOT!  The ER doc said that we should have given him the Epi shot right after we saw that he had a peanut. And from now on each exposure tends to have a worse reaction so I am scared silly of him getting a hold of any more peanuts. I don't know why I was so scared and hesitant to give the EpiPen to him.  But I am trying not to beat myself up about it.  Needless to say, we are now taking the proper steps to get more educated so that we will be pros if this ever happens again.