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Like most young children, 6-year-old Lily Martin is scared of monsters in the dark, but nothing worries this Colorado first grader more than getting close to a peanut. The last time she did, Lily had such a severe allergic reaction that paramedics had to come to her rescue.
It started when her mother spread peanut butter on a cracker and let then 7-month-old Lily taste it. The baby went into anaphylactic shock, a rapid physical reaction that constricts the trachea and keeps a person from being able to breathe.
"Her nose had swelled into her lips and into her cheeks," says Katie Martin, remembering how her hands trembled as she phoned for an ambulance. Within seconds, the baby's skin ballooned, becoming latex-like. "It was so shiny and so swollen that if it would have swelled any more, I think her skin actually would have burst," she said. Rescue workers gave the little girl a shot of epinephrine on a shoulder, which reverses the effect of an allergic attack, restoring her heart rhythm and reducing wheezing.
Five years later, Lily is not allowed to go anywhere without epinephrine. In her small green purse, she carries a plastic, pen-shaped device with a needle called an EpiPen. Written on the side of the bag with a black marker: "Lily is deathly allergic to peanuts and all tree nuts." The EpiPen contains a dose of adrenaline that has to be injected into the allergy sufferer at the first sight of anaphylaxis. Among the symptoms her teachers are trained to look for: difficulty breathing, throat and tongue swelling.
Lily Martin is one of 5.9 million children in the U.S. who battle food allergies. One in every 12 children is allergic to at least one food, according to a study by the Food Allergy Initiative to be published in the journal “Pediatrics” this summer. That's almost twice as many as initially believed. The symptoms range from gastrointestinal discomfort to rashes to life-threatening anaphylaxis, but the non-profit group’s study also found 40 percent of food allergy sufferers also experience a life-threatening condition such as asthma.
Classroom precautions taken to protect another 6-year-old girl like Lily have sparked anger from parents in Edgewater, Florida, a town 1,825 miles away. Ariana Bailey's parents say their little girl lives in constant danger because of her peanut allergy. To ensure her safety, the 32 other children in her first grade class wash their hands before entering the classroom in the morning and wash again after lunch. Ariana’s classmates are not allowed to bring their lunchboxes into the classroom for fear there might be something with peanuts in them. Some parents of the girl’s classmates complain about the restrictions. Carie Starkey, the mother of a 7-year-old girl, says students are spending 30 minutes of their school day in the hand-washing routine, time that should be spent learning. “We want to accommodate this girl, but we want our children to be treated fairly and to not lose out on their school day and their school time,” says Starkey.
Volusia county school officials dispute that it takes 30 full minutes for students to wash their hands. “It's something that does take a little bit of time for these students to do, but it's necessary for this child, so that she doesn't have a terrible reaction,” says Nancy Wait, director of community information for Volusia County schools. Florida school officials say there's little room for debate because the Americans with Disabilities Act ensures everyone, even a child with severe allergies, gets the same access to education.
There is growing evidence of how dangerous severe food allergies can be. In Arizona, a high school freshman snacked on cereal after school with her friends last month and ended up in a coma. Adriana Aguirre, 14, known to her loved ones as "Anna Blue," did not realize there were peanut ingredients in the cereal, says her father, Ed Aguirre. She is on a feeding tube and monitors show some brain activity, but it’s too early to tell if she will recover.
In Chicago, the parents of Katelyn Carlson, 13, say the seventh grader died from an allergic reaction to peanut ingredients in Chinese food last December. School officials had asked the restaurant to cook without peanut oil for an end-of-the-year party. Katelyn’s parents have filed a lawsuit against the restaurant. And in Spokane, Washington, eating a cookie that came in a boxed field-trip lunch caused 9-year-old Nathan Walters to have a deadly allergic reaction. The dessert appeared to be a sugar cookie, but had peanut ingredients. By the time he got medical attention several hours had passed and Nathan did not survive. “A child with a severe allergy to a peanut who isn't given treatment of epinephrin within 30 minutes of exposure to the peanut may face serious illness and even death,” says pediatrician Alanna Levine, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Part of Colorado Springs high school student Morgan Smith’s lunchtime routine is scanning his classmates’ lunches for foods made out of peanuts, tree nuts or shellfish. The 15-year-old says his friends will move several seats away from him if they bring something he says will make him sick, but he remembers a frightening incident when he was younger and another student chased him around the playground with a peanut butter cracker screaming, "I'm going to kill you" over and over. School administrators stopped the student.
Food allergy can have a profound social and psychological effect on the daily lives of affected children and their families, according to the Food Allergy Initiative study to be published in Pediatrics. Lily’s mom worries about that. “We want her certainly to experience life just like a normal kid, like you know, say, camp, sports, those kinds of things,” Martin says. “And invariably, food is a part of our life—it's intertwined.”
Intern Ginelle Boyer contributed to this story.
For more information:
The Food Allergy Initiative (FAI)
http://www.faiusa.org/page.aspx?pid=405
The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN)
Allergic Child
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