Tuesday, October 28, 2008

One Little Tootsie Pop

Halloween is always a fun holiday for children with food allergies and their parents. (I hope you catch my sarcasm.) Tyler is beginning to understand that he can't eat most of his Trick-or-Treat candy because it has "bad milk" in it - but that doesn't necessarily make it any easier for us.

Our church Halloween party was a couple weeks ago & included Trick-or-Treating. Tyler was pretty good about asking which candies he could eat. He gave a tootsie pop to Grandma, Grandpa, Jeff & me since he couldn't eat them himself. I ate my tootsie pop that night & my parents took theirs home with them. Jeff, not a huge candy eater, left his on the counter. Well, a couple days later, I came out of the bathroom & Tyler told me, "Mommy, I ate that sucker I gave to Daddy." I couldn't believe it! Those aren't just made on shared equipment with milk! They actually contain whey and condensed skim milk! I hurried & gave him Benadryl. Then I called Jeff at work & told him to be prepared to meet us at the Emergency Room. Amazingly enough, Tyler didn't have a reaction to the milk in the tootsie pop! He didn't even get hives! I'm hoping that means that he's beginning to outgrow his allergy - either that, or I gave him the Benadryl fast enough. Who knows? I know I shouldn't get my hopes up. Especially since he had hives all over his face and neck at the end of church on Sunday. But this is a really good sign & I hope that his next blood test will show some improvement. In the meantime, we just have to survive Halloween this Friday & I think we'll be OK.

*An added note after the questions in Krista's comment:
Tyler did eat the entire tootsie pop, but it was one of those mini-sized tootsie pops. I found the wrapper on the counter & I dug through the trash to find the stick, because I wanted to see if he'd really eaten the whole thing. It took a while to find the stick because it fell into the bag from our frozen burritos. There was no candy left on the stick & I could see the different colors on the stick from the sucker part & the chocolate part. He really did eat the whole thing. I asked him if he liked it & with a great big smile he said, "Yeah, it was good." And now, we just got home from being out & about and Tyler had horrible blistered hives all over his face & neck. So I had to give him a bath & Benadryl. I wonder what he touched!?! Maybe we were just really, really blessed last week when Tyler ate the Tootsie Pop. Heavenly Father was protecting him when I wasn't there doing my job.

3 comments:

The Kneeland Family said...

Did you actually see the empty sucker stick? Did he eat the whole thing? If so that is amazing, because the soap even effected him. But that is great. I really hope he grows out of it, it would be so nice for his future.

Kristin said...

It is horrible have a kid with food allergies. I am so glad that nothing happened to Tyler. Sometimes the really processed things don't cause the same severe reactions. I hope that he will outgrow his allergy or at least have less severe reactions as he grows. That is scary.

Ilene said...

Before Jackson outgrew his peanut allergy, I remember thinking that I would have to "plant" candy up and down our street so he could be part of the festivities.

Halloween stinks for food allergy kids!

I'm glad Tyler was okay. I can imagine how stressful that would be!