peanut butter

Elijah tried peanut butter yesterday for the first time with disastrous results. Here's the full story.

At 2:15 pm he ate a late lunch after a long nap. The lunch consisted of a half of peanut butter sandwich (no jelly :) ). Soon after that, Daddy came home and we were all hanging out together. Around 3:30 pm Elijah started acting funny. It looked like he was objecting to me sitting where Daddy usually sit when he is home. He was standing by my chair and whining. In another half an hour he started crying and clinging to me for no apparent reason. He'd get cozy in my arms sucking his thumb, then want to get down and play for a few minutes, then run back to me, ask to be picked up, cry in my arms, get cozy, suck his thumb, get down again. That went on for 20 minutes or so. We decided he must have been teething and gave him Tylenol, after which we packed up and went to church (Ryan was supposed to help clean out some closets and Elijah and I were invited to tag along for a free dinner). On the way to church, which is only about 2 miles, Elijah started sneezing continually. He must have sneezed 20 times or so. He kept it up at church for a while, so I was starting to think he was allergic to something in the air or was plain getting sick.

After running around the church and playing in the nursery for a while, we made our way back where Ryan with several other people were working. And then, all of a sudden, in front of our eyes, Elijah turned dark red and broke out in hives. First his ears, then his neck and shoulders were covered in white spots that eventually ran together and looked just terrible. One of the ladies working on the closets was a school nurse. She asked what he'd eaten that day, and it struck me: he'd never before had peanut butter! I meant to make him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a few occasions, but never actually did. We had a jar of organic cashew butter, so I always gave him that instead of the sugary Skippy stuff. Then a few days ago I picked up a jar of organic peanut butter from Trader Joe's. That's what he had for lunch. People in the room gathered around and the school nurse said that this can be very serious and that we should go straight to the ER. Freaked out, we grabbed the child and rushed to the hospital, which was only about half a mile away. On the way there, even Elijah's eyelids got covered with hives.

The ER staff was (naturally) in no hurry to see us :). Elijah seemed to be in quite a bit of discomfort and screaming at the top of his lungs, but he was still breathing, so no one was to worried. By the time the triage nurse finally saw him, he was already doing better. Some benadryl also helped, although the reaction continued for several hours afterwards until he was given steroids.

At one point while waiting to see a doctor (all in all we spent 6 hours in the ER) I had to use a bathroom and overheard a woman talking on her cell phone, saying what sounded like, "He said he'd be back to shoot some more." I wasn't sure if I heard right, but it still sounded distressing. Turned out, shortly after 3 pm a man boarded a CTA bus about 5 miles from our house and opened fire. He shot five people, some of whom had been taken to the same hospital where we arrived at less than 2 hours later. When we were leaving shortly before 11 pm, the families, friends and classmates of those shot were still standing gathered in groups outside of the ER entrance. It was freaky going to the pharmacy at almost midnight to fill Elijah's prescription knowing the gunman was still out there somewhere.

Elijah is doing well today. He even recovered his appetite by the end of the day. And his skin is mostly clean except for a few spots where it was the worst yesterday. His airways didn't get constricted at any point, or at least as far as we know. But if you are visiting our home in the next few years, you may have to eat a cashew butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, as I am afraid even organic peanut butter will be banned for a while :).