The Wrong Lunch

It's been a while since I've blogged. I'd like to think that I'll post more often, but between workingshoppingcookingcleaningschleppingorganizingplanningchildrearing I'm sometimes a little pre-occupied.

Well, we're still kosher, and we're still nut free. The fun new cherry on top of the peanut allergy sundae is that my son now has asthma too, which apparently is connected to his allergy. The pediatric pulmonologist we visited told me that she's never met a child with a peanut allergy who didn't also have asthma. Wouldn't it have been nice for the allergist to mention this to me last year when he diagnosed my son? Wouldn't it have been nice for my pediatrician to mention this before sending my son for cystic fibrosis tests? Yes to both. In any case, our house is now a mini pharmacy. In addition to the usual mommy supplies like Tylenol (my new favorite are the meltaways), ibuprofen, and bandaids, we're fully stocked with epi-pens, benadryl, albuterol, flovent, and optichambers. The epi-pens and optichambers are not covered by insurance; thank goodness for flex spending accounts!

We've had a couple of nut free hiccups over the past couple of months. Each time my son was fine, B"H, but both incidents were scary nonetheless.

Scary nut incident #1: One Shabbos morning in December, my DH was sicker than I've ever seen him. No voice, fever, terrible cough, etc. I decided to bundle up the boys - and myself - and head to shul while leaving DH home in bed to rest. It was a regular week at shul with no special simchas, so they had laid out the regular post-davening snacks: herring (blech), crackers, soda, and an assortment of Entenmann's cakes and donuts cut into tiny pieces. The usual fair is predictable and nut free, so I don't tend to keep a close eye on my son while he runs around, socializing and making typical 3.5 year-old trouble.

Well, on this particular Shabbos, I was busy talking to my closest shul friend, who had just shared fabulous news with me (babies! babies! babies!), when my son ran up to me with a piece of something in his hand and said, "Ima, does this have peanuts?" I immediately said no, but as he turned away (while taking a big bite), I suddenly had a feeling that he wasn't holding one of the usual cakes or donuts. I called him back and grabbed the cake out of his hand. Sure enough, it was some kind of nut cake. It didn't have peanuts (BARUCH HASHEM) but it did have big pieces of either walnuts or pecans. I essentially threw the cake to the side, yanked the half-chewed piece out of his mouth, and started freaking out. "Do you feel ok? Does your throat feel funny? Is your mouth itchy?" I was staring at him from about 2 inches away from his face, just waiting to see if a rash started to form, or if his breathing changed. The poor kid was scared out of his mind. He looked like he was about to burst into tears. I didn't know whether it was because he felt sick or because his mother was going ape$hit ballistic in the middle of shul, but I managed to squash the situation before the tantrum began. After talking to him about it (and feeling better because a few minutes had passed and no symptoms had appeared), I concluded that he was sad because he had eaten nuts, and he was sad that I had taken his cake. With a new donut in hand and a big kiss from Ima, he was back to normal within moments.

I learned my lesson. Even "safe" places aren't. Grr.

Speaking of a false sense of security, let's move onto Scary Nut Incident #2.

My son's school is nut-free-seed-free, which is great...usually. There is the occasional day when my son comes home telling me that Shmuli (name changed to protect the innocent) had a birthday party but the cookies had traces of nuts, so he had a banana instead, but usually I can rest assured that when he is in school, he doesn't have to be worried about nuts.

A couple of weeks ago, my DH called me at work to tell me that my son's teacher called him to say that they accidentally served sesame seeds with lunch. Although my son's one confirmed allergy is to peanuts, he is also supposed to avoid all nuts and sesame seeds. So anyway, the school's food is cooked in Brooklyn, then shipped to Yonkers every day. Apparently, without realizing it, they had served sesame chicken to the kids. After a bite or two, my son's teacher realized what had happened and took the food away from him, brought him to the office, and called DH. Again, B"H he had no reaction, but he was sad that his food was taken away. DH expressed his disappointment that the situation had occured and his appreciation that they had handled it the way they did, but now we have to worry about him even when he's at school!

That evening, when I got home from work and asked him if anything sad had happened at lunch that day, he told me that his morahs (Hebrew word for teacher) had given him the wrong lunch. That just about broke my heart. My sweet, trusting little boy who knows that he's not allowed to eat nuts or sesames but also knows that food at school should be safe. When I asked him what they gave him after taking away the "wrong" lunch, he told me they gave him grapes. The image of him sitting in school eating grapes for lunch is just so sad.

Since that day, there have been a few mornings when he has said, "I hope my morahs don't give me the wrong lunch today." I hope not too.