Abbie was 14 months when we learned that she had a peanut allergy.  She attends a daycare that is on site at the hospital where I work.  I normally work 8 hour days, but that day I had to come in on my day off for a meeting.  So, Abbie was only at daycare for a couple of hours.  After lunch, one of her care givers gave her a bite of her candy bar.  Her candy bar happened to be a “Pay Day”.  Abbie went down for her nap after that.  As I picked her up, I made a comment that her eye was really red.  The worker said that they noticed it also and that she had been rubbing her eye quite a bit.  I just assumed that she had pink eye.

I put her in the car and began my hour drive home.  During the first 15-20 minutes of the drive, she was very fidgety which was unlike her.  She began to cry, but her cry was not that of an unhappy baby, she seemed distressed or in pain.  I happened to be on the phone with my husband and he even noticed over the phone that she seemed very upset.  By 30 minutes into the drive she was screaming and pulling at her ears and was blotchy all over.  I knew at this point that something was not normal with her.  As I was getting close to my exit, she began to cough.  As each minute passed, her cough became more productive.  At 50 minutes into my drive, I could hear her wheezing from the back seat and her face was swollen.  I called my husband back and told him that I thought I needed to have her seen somewhere before we came home.  All of this time, I was unaware that she’d had anything out of the ordinary to eat.  As I was getting her out of the car to go into the doctor’s office, I noticed all of the hives and how badly she was swollen.  I decided to put her back in the car and go around the block to the Emergency Room.  Thank goodness I did!  I called the daycare and still no one knew she had eaten a bite of the candy bar.  I called her main care giver on her cell phone and that is how I knew what I was dealing with.  The ER was absolutely wonderful.  I was signed in, triaged, and in a room with a doctor in less than 10 minutes.  She got steroids, Benadryl, and a breathing treatment.  Thankfully, she cleared up within an hour or so.

We have seen the pediatric allergist and are also carrying around an EpiPen wherever we go.  I can only be thankful that this particular day I didn’t stay as normal.  I don’t know that she would have been noticed as quickly in a daycare setting.  It was very scary knowing that I was in between two cities for a hospital.  At the point I knew I had a problem, I was 30 minutes away in either direction!  God was certainly watching out for us that day.

Susan Brumley
Owensboro, KY