Anaphylactic shock, Food Sensitivities, and a Numbers Game

Anaphylactic Shock and Allergies:

Its my humble opinion, that one who goes into Anaphylactic Shock should probably avoid at all cost the offending food and NOT make exceptions. Surprising as it may seem, some parents do allow their child to have a little peanut treat, but only rarely. This in my view, is dangerous. One teenager died because she kissed her boyfriend. Her boyfriend forgot that he had ate something with peanuts earlier. Life is too valuable to worry about "Oh, my child feels so left out!" I don't care how left out your child feels, allowing suicide is idiotic! The teenagers were not purposefully suicidal. Her boyfriend was usually very careful, as was she. He supported her in her allergy. Depending on what foods cause you to go into shock it may be best to make everything from scratch. I would definately carry a Epi-pen at all times without failure, despite its need for refrigeration. The teen's story, only illustrates who important this is. It is a policy in almost all schools that any medical item that a student requires that is a drug or needle only be available IN the Nurses office. I would argue that in the case of an Epi-Pen, the Epi-Pen should be carried ON the Student at ALL times. Portable lunch bags with ice packs do work. Its fine to have a teacher administer the drug, but sometimes even this isn't fast enough.



I also highly recommend all teachers and potential teachers have to pass a class that teaches how to deal with Students with specific health needs. And, that this class be a high standards Pass-Fail where a failure to remember key procedures on any one health need means Fail. Then, I would take those mostly useless Teacher Inservice Training Days, and have them relearn this information and have it updated with the latest Scientic Procedures. I know, this is what the nurse if for. However, in the case of Shock, waiting for the nurse to come may be too late, especially if the nurse is located on the other side of the school. Plus, many special needs students have been ill treated due to Teacher Ignorance and Arrogance. Maybe, this class might help eliminate some of these people who really shouldn't be teaching in the first place. [ Other recommendations, that are bit off-topic: Second recommendation, which is extremely laughable as no one will ever put up the money for this, is to relocate the Nurse's office to the center most location in the school and build short-cut paths to the nurses office to be used in emergencies. I'd also put the library in the center of the school as well. But, that's just me thinking that Education should be at the center of a school and teachers should make better use of the library and its research abilities. The school office should be located at the entrance to help weed out visitors who don't belong. ]

Further, if you have more severe GI to foods, I would still avoid those foods too because their is still the chance that it could develop into anaphylactic shock, even though this is still considered "rare",  many still do.

Benefits of avoidance: When you must eat the offending food item and can not avoid it at any cost, you will have a lesser chance of going into shock because the amount of times you've had this food item should be so low and infrequent that this should be rare. This is playing a numbers game. Some people have gone into shock on the 3rd time eating the food.

However, any food that causes a mood swing in you that is severe and not like you, means that you either have or are developing an allergy to such food, and should avoid that food at all cost with no exceptions. This is true for me as far as cinnamon is concerned. It did not take long for mood swings to change into physical ailments such as sore throat, and burning sensation. I had in error, thought that I could have cinnamon only when I was overly depressed. That is not the case. I have had cinnamon previously only once every 3 years, very consistantly, and did start having the burning sensations even if I smelled cinnamon and did not ingest.