Food Allergy Awareness Saves Lives

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

This is Food Allergy Awareness Week. My daughter has life threatening food allergies so I can tell you from personal experience that greater Awareness of food allergies would be a tremendous tool for saving lives. Below is a speech my wife, Wendy Siegel gave to members of U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), office this past September.

By Wendy Siegel, Guest Blogger
My 10 year old daughter has life threatening food allergies to milk and peanuts.

I spent my 35th birthday in the hospital with my then 2 ½ year old daughter. The night before, she’d suffered a severe bounce back allergic reaction to rice cheese. I remember being so excited that day at the store because I’d finally found a cheese my milk allergic child could eat… Uneducated allergy mom I was at the time, I didn’t realize that rice cheese contained casein (otherwise known as milk protein.) We realized something was wrong when she started breaking out in hives all over her body and had trouble breathing. That was the first time we administered her EpiPen® and that was our first and only stay in the hospital for a severe allergic reaction- thank goodness. It would not be our only call to 911, though or our only visit to the emergency room.

Seven years later, I’m a lot more educated on food labels and on food allergies overall, but it’s still very hard. Food labeling for allergens is so inconsistent and often times nonexistent. For all doctors seem to know about food allergies, it seems there is much more they do not know.

I quit my job before my daughter started kindergarten because I felt the need to be very involved and present up at her school. Being an allergy mom is a full time job. I’m just thankful that I had this opportunity to become a full time advocate for my daughter.

Walk a day in our shoes. The things that most people look forward to in life, we dread. I dread birthday parties, Halloween, traveling with my daughter, traveling without my daughter, slumber parties, camp, camping trips, and the list goes on an on…

It is not okay for food to be the enemy. Part of being a parent is that you always worry about your children- this we accept. But to worry about them dying because they accidentally ingest the wrong food? It is not okay for us allergy moms to have to worry every single day that something our precious children eat may kill them. I often wonder what it will take to get people’s attention on how important this is.

I feel like I’m racing against the clock. My biggest wish in life is that there will be some sort of cure for my daughter’s allergies before I have to send her off to college without me.

For more information on Food Allergies see The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network and Kids With Food Allergies.

Tagged as: Anaphylaxis, Food allergies, food allergy awareness, milk allergy, peanut allergy