Now This is the Story All About How…

Now this is a story all about how, my life got flipped turned upside down…

And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there

I’ll tell you how I became the prince(ss) of…..well, not a town called Bel Air.

Ok, I was going to keep going with it, but my talents apparently do not lie in coming up with sick bars about food allergies. Did I just say sick bars? About food allergies? And while using a theme song from a ‘90s sitcom?  Albeit a totally amazing ‘90s sitcom.

Anyway, in trying to set the tone of this blog with my family’s story of what turned our life upside down I didn’t want to come at you hard. I didn’t want to jump into the deep end right away with something like, I almost watched my child die. Because of food.  But…I did.

We went from a life of chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool to freaking out, fearing, and panicking about food.

Ok, I’ll stop with the Fresh Prince stuff*.  For a little while at least. Let’s regroup a bit.

There isn’t a word I can find to truly define what I believe life is. We all have our stories. Our experiences. Our adventures. Our routines. We have the mixture of the normalcies and the things we never ever saw coming. First experiences, learning experiences, and experiences we don’t even realize are actually relevant.

Every day brings something new in one way or another. The big stuff you schedule in life—such as going on a vacation, getting married, or packing up and moving to Bel Air (ok, couldn’t help myself)—are the moments where you consciously know things are about to change. You can prepare and you can pause to take it all in. However, some days you wake up assuming you are about to embark on a relatively uneventful day and that is when the big stuff happens. When your life really, truly changes. The unexpected is just that—unexpected.

So, when did your life change? What comes to mind?

Likely you have more than one event in your life that really stands out. And maybe your life is filled with more zigs and zags than straight—or even slightly bent—lines from point A to point B to point C.  And just maybe you have some life happenings that sent you not only down a different path, but that rocketed you so incredibly far from said path that you can’t even remember where you were initially going.

So, I’m guessing at this point you have thought of at least one experience that greatly affected your life. I have a few. Some were the big moments. Graduating from college, getting married, getting divorced, getting married again, having a baby, and having another baby.  You know, the standard game changers.

One of the not-so-big-but-turned-out-to-be-big moments was when I was shooting some b-ball outside of the school (yep, I went there again) back when I was 11-years-old and I decided to pass on trying out for our district’s “traveling” basketball team and opted instead to play in the “rec” league. That decision put me on a team with someone I can still call one of my best friends almost 30 years later. That moment made a difference.

You know what other event altered my path?  Touching a peanut butter cookie to my son’s mouth.  Yep. A dime-size piece of a cookie thrust my family into a world of chaos and fear by showing us that food actually has the power to kill.

Whoa. Now we’re making our way into the deep end.

It was May 2016. My oldest son, Marshall, was 15-months-old and I was about eight months pregnant with baby boy number two. I was three weeks from my due date. It was a typical day—you know, one of those days you expected to be uneventful—and we decided to give Marshall a peanut butter cookie.

My husband, Robb, and I were at our kitchen table and Marshall was sitting next to us in his highchair. Robb broke up a cookie into tiny dime-size pieces and set them on the highchair tray. Marshall didn’t grab at the food (he was a bit of a picky eater) so Robb picked up a piece of the cookie and touched it to Marshall’s mouth.  Marshall instantly spit it out. It had barely crossed his lips. Not thinking much of it, Robb tried again. He placed another piece to Marshall’s lips and it was met with the same reaction so we didn’t try again.

I don’t really remember what we were doing at this point. I assume Robb and I were eating a snack or dinner since we were all at the table, but what I do remember was looking over at Marshall within seconds of peanut-butter-cookie-attempt-number-two and something wasn’t right.

Marshall’s lips were swelling, his face was red, and his blue eyes were wide like he was in shock. He was so young and couldn’t verbalize what he was feeling, but I could tell by the look on his face he knew something wasn’t right. Robb and I knew this was bad. We went into autopilot mode and got Marshall into the car at Mach speed. Robb sped to the hospital with me in the passenger seat and I kept telling Marshall the whole way there it’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay, you’re okay…

I think I was in a daze and denial most of the ride. I didn’t want to believe what was happening was actually happening. And I don’t even think I really realized yet the severity of what was really happening in this moment. Being baby number two was close to making his appearance, his car seat was already installed in the back seat and I wasn’t able to sit next to Marshall for the ride. So when we skidded into the hospital parking lot and I jumped out of the front passenger seat and opened Marshall’s door I was taken aback to be looking at a baby that was unrecognizable to me. Now the holy $#!% was kicking in more. His lips and face were so, so, so swollen.

We weren’t in a parking spot at this point. Just in the drop off area by the front door of the emergency room, so being that I could only hobble so fast, Robb grabbed Marshall and ran inside while I parked the car. Thankfully there was an open space up close so it only took me a couple of minutes to walk through the front doors.

Upon entering the ER waiting area, I noticed it was packed full of people. Literally every chair filled, people standing, leaning against the walls, and sitting on the floor. I saw Robb and Marshall across the room at the check-in desk and as I was making my way to them, a set of double doors just beyond the desk basically burst open and we were immediately whisked through them.

It was like out of a movie. The nurse who first barreled through the doors told us to follow her and she took off speed walking without any hesitation. I know nothing about medical protocol and communication, but she was waving her hands around in what I assume were some sort of signals, because more and more medical staff starting following us on our trek. We ended up in a room with multiple medical professionals in what can only be described as organized chaos.

At this point Robb was still holding Marshall and the doctors had him sit on the exam table with Marshall in his lap. Marshall was immediately stripped down to his diaper (to which we then saw he also had a red rash all over his torso) and he was screaming. I can’t even imagine how terrified he was. Well, maybe I can a little bit as I was terrified as well. I was standing at the end of the exam table or bed or whatever it is called just staring at Marshall wanting to simply hug him and hold him tight, but I knew I had to stay out of the way.

He was given epinephrine, an antihistamine, and an IV with a steroid. We were at the hospital for about 4 hours that night while he was hooked up to monitors and given medication. Fortunately, he responded well enough and the swelling went down enough for us to be able to take him home and not have to stay the night.

Marshall had just survived an anaphylactic allergic reaction caused by exposure to peanuts. We were lucky everything turned out the way it did.

So next we pulled up to our house about seven or eight (okay, it was more like 10pm or 11pm, but it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it) and we had an arsenal of medications to give him for the next few days in an effort to decrease the chance of a biphasic reaction.

Now you would think this would have been the most intense experience in relation to entering the world of food allergies, but wait for it… it doesn’t end here. I’m just getting started. What happens over the next few days really cannon balled me into the deep end of the food allergy pool and I had no idea where my life jacket was. So, to be continued…. Yo homes, smell ya later! (Sorry, not sorry for that. And sorry, not sorry for using sorry, not sorry).

*I don’t own any rights to anything related to Will Smith or The Fresh Prince of Bel Air or anything else I’m not mentioning that I should be, but I can bust out a mean Carlton Dance after a few cocktails