When my daughter was a toddler, I had my suspicions that she was allergic to nuts. I wasn’t quite sure because her only reaction was scratching at her tongue. Most people who saw her react that way would just say they didn’t think she liked the texture. I would state that I thought it was a little more than that, but everyone told me to let it go. So, like a typical uninformed mother, who didn’t know about food allergies, I begrudgingly let it go.
A couple of months later, we decided to visit some relatives of ours. I usually took food along for my daughter when we ate out because she was very picky. The one time I didn’t do it, I received my wake up call. She was eating a vegan casserole and loving it. I was shocked, because this wasn’t typical of her, but excited just the same. She asked for more and I gave her more. Then suddenly, she said she didn’t want anymore and developed a blank look on her face. I looked at my mother which made her immediately ask my aunt what was in the casserole. Low and behold, it was made with cashew butter. All we could do was watch her closely. At the time, I thought it was a good thing when she suddenly decided to take a nap. I figured she could sleep it off. What I didn’t know was that her blood level was dropping causing her to fall asleep. When she awoke, she was the happy perky child that was playing earlier. Yes, I thought. We are out of the woods and everything would be okay. Wrong. On the way home, she looked at me and said, ‘Mommy, I need to throw up.’ Casserole everywhere! After seeing that, I realized there was more to this than I thought and decided she needed to get tested right away.
And this began my journey into food allergy frustrations.
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