More information

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/11/health/living-well/food-allergies-schools/index.html?hpt=he_c1

I have questions about this story. They address the issue of students not knowing that they are allergic until they have a reaction, but I don't think they ever come out and say that this girl didn't know. If she did, why did she take the peanut? And if she didn't, what was a peanut doing outside at recess? At my elementary school we were only allowed to have food in the cafeteria or when handed out by a teacher, for custodial reasons as well as health ones.

Here we go again

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/04/health/virginia-allergy-death/index.html?hpt=he_c2

The tragedy is unsettling, but what's worse is the loud, angry debate found in the comment section, and in the comment section of every other story like this. "The kid should've been homeschooled!" "All children have rights!" "Not my kid, not my problem!"
It's the reason I'm afraid to ask for anything. It's frightening and unfeeling and callous, but mostly it's tiring. I am so sick of this. Will this issue ever be resolved?

There aren't enough exclamation points in the world

I get to have candy corn. Incredible, right?
I made a post some months ago about how I could no longer find a brand of candy corn that didn't manufacture on the same equipment that also processes peanuts, and just recently a woman called brilliantmindbrokenbody gave me a link to a site that sells it! I ordered some, and it's delicious! It's perfect! I love it! Thank you!
 http://www.peanutfreeplanet.com/Sunrise_Candy_Corn_p/sunrisecandycorn%209oz.htm

How far am I allowed to go?

While I understand that my school's reluctance and in some cases flat-out refusal to accommodate me for the sake of their convenience was wrong, I have to wonder if they did have a point. Things like regularly wiping down surfaces and reading the label on everything I eat might seem normal to me, but to other people look ridiculously extreme. And do I actually have a right to say that no one around me can eat peanuts ever?
Adults glared at me when I asked them to bring the class candy from one brand and not another, and while that might be somewhat justifiable, where am I supposed to draw the line? I wanted to attend parties, but I didn't want to inconvenience anyone. I didn't know what to do. I still don't.
I panic a little whenever I read about legislation for better allergy policies in schools. "Don't these people know that's inconvenient and annoying? The school officials are going to frown and cross their arms at them! They'll be intimidated! What do they think they're doing???" But that's a stupid response, and I know it's a stupid response, and yet I can't help it because I don't know how far I'm allowed to go.
At what point would you be angry with me?

Did you read the dead bird?

I'm a vegetarian. Not because of any meat-is-murder train of thought, because my mother is a vegetarian and I was raised on a vegetarian diet. When I was about eight my parents asked me if I wanted to try meat, but we had a hard time finding a restaurant that didn't cook their meat in or close to peanut oil, and when I finally got some it wasn't earth-shatteringly wonderful. I ate hot dogs for a while, but after finding an unidentifiable and very chewy thing in the middle of one I was more than ready to go back to salad. There's usually a small packet of ham in the fridge that my father puts in his omlettes, but apart from that the house is pretty meat-free.
My father went to the store last night after we realized that we'd run out of food without anyone noticing. When he came back I started putting the food away and discovered some fried chicken, which raised a lot of alarm bells because the bag said it was from Wal*Mart and we'd discovered when I was eleven that I couldn't eat chicken from Wal*Mart. Since it had been six years I thought that something might have changed, but I was still cautious enough that I went outside in the dark in my pajamas to where my father was continuing to unload the car, where I asked him if he had "read the dead bird," which is wary vegetarian teenager speak for "did you check to make sure it's safe for me to be in the same room with the chicken?"
He said he had read the dead bird, but when I got more specific and asked if he'd read the dead bird display he realized that he hadn't. Six years ago the chicken itself had been fine, while the display had warned that everything on it had been made next to stuff that was made in peanut oil.
Although I'm usually the one who searches with him, Poodleface was already sniffing around the chicken when my dad got back to the kitchen, so he asked him if there was anything there and he happily indicated. Which impressed my dad, since he normally doesn't give Poodleface the time of day. And yet the dog was willing to search for him.
I came in shortly after that and asked Poodleface to confirm what he'd told my dad, which he did very emphatically, slapping his paw against the bag when my dad asked him if he was sure. "It's here, right here, I've only told you three times!"  Then he got his reward and the chicken was removed from the house.
Have I mentioned that I love that dog?

What would it take to make a scaredy-cat play with fire?

In one of my previous posts I talked about how my allergist assumed that I was no longer allergic to peanuts because I hadn't been to the emergency room in the past year. I hadn't planned on talking about him any further, but today I found an appointment reminder postcard from him in my mailbox and now I'm angry enough to elaborate on his story.

As I said before, he was insistent that I, personally, didn't need a service dog, nor did anyone else with a severe allergy. He explained to my family why he thought it was a bad idea and said that we should instead consider prescription medication to suppress my immune system. My father declined the medication and insisted that he give me the test, as they had planned over the phone. He did have me tested but kept insisting that I must not be severely allergic anymore because I hadn't nearly died recently.

The tests showed that I was still severely allergic and perhaps I hadn't nearly died recently because I was a responsible young adult who knew how to manage my allergy. 

My parents sent in the paperwork for the service dog and everything was approved. Now we just had to get permission from the school district for me to bring the dog to school.

The reason my parents thought I needed a dog was that I kept getting sick in class. I would being to cough and would get painful rashes, usually on the palms of my hands or the undersides of my arms, which indicated that I'd sat at a contaminated desk or touched a contaminated hand rail. The reactions that I was having were usually very painful, and with each new reaction there was a risk that my allergy could become much more severe. It was already at the point were it could kill me, and my parents didn't want it to become bad enough that I could die before medical help could arrive. 

About three weeks after I'd seen the allergist I started to have problems in one of my classes. After a few minutes of class my hands would begin to feel hot and itchy and I would being to cough. On one day I wore short sleeves and the reaction covered my entire right arm. After a few minutes of coughing I would either ask to leave or the teacher would order me to step outside until I could get control of myself, and then I would go down to the office and get some Benadryl from the nurse and ask that someone please clean my desk. This happened three days in a row. On the third day my assigned guidance counselor approached me as I was sitting outside the nurse's office waiting for the period to end. She sat down next to me and asked me, with great concern in her voice, why I was skipping this class. I told her that I wasn't skipping, I really was having an allergic reaction. She said, still sounding very concerned, that she knew it wasn't possible for me to have an allergic reaction unless I ate something and that I could tell her what was bothering me. I tried to explain that some allergies are more severe than others, but she left before I could finish.

She went back to her office and made several phone calls, one of which was to my allergist, whose number I assume she got from my file. She told him that, hypothetically, there was a student who was claiming to have an allergic reaction to peanuts when there were no peanuts present in the room, and that she hadn't recently eaten anything that might have been causing it. And she wondered, hypothetically, if this was possible. My allergist told her that, hypothetically, the student was lying. 

Being the kind, caring, and exceedingly nosy person that she is, my counselor decided that she should save my academic future by putting a stop to my lying. 

There were already a lot of people who didn't believe me, so many that I was honestly surprised when the teacher was the one who asked me to leave. Usually I'm told that I have to stay, and then they would watch me closely to see if they could find a flaw in my acting, and I'd either have to get up and leave without their permission or bother them enough that they let me leave so that my parents wouldn't complain to the school. So the fact that my counselor had gotten a medical professional to say that, hypothetically, I was a liar, wasn't great for the case that I should be allowed to have a service dog.

That night my father spent hours at the computer, surfing the internet and printing a stack of papers as thick as a paperback book. They all talked about severe food allergies, and they all supported what I'd said. He took it to the principal, explained what was happening with me, and then made the case for the service dog. The principal agreed.

But it really screwed me up. I already wasn't sure I deserved a service dog. The junior high had let people give me death threats and acted like I was off my nut when I tried to get them to help me. My allergist had insisted a service dog was unnecessary. And half the adults in my life got angry or exasperated or began patting me on the head when I mentioned my allergies. Was I really allergic? Was I lying so well I'd convinced myself? What could I have done wrong to make so many people angry with me? 

My father cut my old allergist out of the loop. The next time we needed a doctor's note he got it from the pediatrician, and he found a new allergist out of state that I'll go to the next time I need an allergy test. So today, when I got the appointment card from that close-minded old fart, and I realized that he still considers me his patient and thinks he can have a say in my life, I took it outside and burned it. 

Why I hate the movies

We can learn a lot from Hollywood. Over the years I've learned lots of useful things from them, such as:

• The air vents are the perfect way to move through any building. There will never be any dust in these vents and no one will turn on the air conditioning while I happen to be inside.
• Foreign people prefer to speak in heavily accented English when alone.
• The more I hate someone, the more likely it is we're going to fall in love after a night of spontaneous passion.
• When you need to shut someone up at a cocktail party, just grab some food from a nearby tray and shove it in their mouth.

All valuable lessons, but I take issue with the last one. You don't spontaneously force food on someone. What if they're vegan? What if it wasn't kosher? What if they're allergic to it? What are you going to do then, huh?!?! Ever think of that???

I hate the spontaneous force-feeding gag almost as much as I hate the dog food commercial with the boy in the wheelchair. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's about a high school boy who only feeds his service dog this one wonderful brand of dog food. We know it's a service dog because we see it go up on its hind legs and push open a door for him while he does a voice-over about this great dog food. In the final scene he rolls up to a table outside on a bright sunny day, and a pretty blonde girl, presumably one of his friends, leans over and pats his dog on the head. 

Until I saw that commercial I never understood why the general public thought they could pet my dog without asking. Now I get it. The media are idiots. 

And while I'm talking about tv and movies, why do only geeks have allergies? You might think allergies cause geekiness, or perhaps geekiness causes allergies, but I think I can safely say neither is true. In addition to peanuts I'm also allergic to cats, dust, pollen, wool, and perfumed or strongly scented things, and, apart from wearing glasses, I fit none of the usual geek stereotypes. So seriously Hollywood? What's up with that? 

For me, one of the worst things about having allergies, even worse than not being able to eat candy corn, is how some people automatically assume I'm going to be an uncool panicky organic food snob because that's how people with allergies look in the movies. Heck, just look at the Dorfmans from iCarly!

Please don't stereotype people with allergies. It further complicates our already stressful lives.