Peanut Butter Allergy-Yikes!

Have I ever mentioned that I have the MOST amazing pre-school teacher in the whole stinking world for Rachel and Drezden? Well, I do. Really. She is amazing, and she's amazing enough that she also only employs equally as amazing people to work for her. I love Mrs. Buppy and her helper, Mrs. Amy. They get big points in my book, and I'm still working on convincing them both that they want to move away with us. Since Mrs. Buppy is madly in love with a certain ruggedly handsome local elementary school principal, and Mrs. Emee likes her pretty great life here, it looks like I'll be moving on without them. That part makes me sad, so I won't write much more on that. But, I will go on to describe something they figured out this week that I had completely overlooked.

Drezden has a severe allergy to peanut butter. It's really bad, and I'd never have figured it out were it not for the great sleuthing efforts of Mrs. Buffy. I had sent him to school on Thursday with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He had a great morning, played hard, and had fun. After lunch, Buffy made note that he coughed and coughed and coughed all the way through his nap. His inhaler didn't seem to help it.

Friday, he did much better. It was the same scenario, except that I sent ham and cheese in his lunch. He played, ran around, and had a great time. He slept fine and then woke up for snack. Snack was peanut butter crackers. Immediately the coughing until almost vomiting started, and Buffy knew what it was. PEANUT BUTTER ALLERGY!

She texted me what was happening and I granted permission to give Benedryl. Poor kid. It took a while for the medicine to kick in, but it finally helped him. I put in a call to the doctor to get him tested for allergies, but it was Friday afternoon and the doctor was off for the weekend.

Last night, Drezden wanted a granola bar. Out of 18 in the box, ONE had peanut butter. Guess which one he managed to get? Yep. You guessed it. The peanut butter one! It took a matter of seconds before he was coughing, vomiting, and breaking out in blotchy spots that I can only assume were hives. We gave him a dose of his steroids, some benedryl, his cough suppressant, and his regular prescriptions. Finally, he was able to settle down and sleep.

Today, the coughing persisted. He made me nervous enough that I took him to the kids' urgent care. They confirmed that Mrs. Buffy's assessment was probably very correct. He now has a whole new set of meds including an epi pen that we will keep with him wherever he goes.

Were it not for Mrs. Buffy, we would have just thought he had a bad asthma attack. She is a stinking genius! Now, I just have to figure out how to convince her to come with us to our new area so she can continue to help parent my children...or at least prevent me from accidentally killing them.