Worst Case Scenario

Okay. Yesterday was stressful.

We've been waiting more than six years for this test. Leander was diagnosed with allergies more than six years ago, when he was ten months old. Most children outgrow their egg allergy by the age of (depending on where you get your information) three or five. Leander is seven. Children who outgrow their egg allergy often still show a positive blood test, so the only way to know if they have outgrown it is to perform a challenge.

On my way to pick up Ouma (the hospital prefers that the parent of a food challenge child (a food challenger?) not have other children in tow to look after), I had a silent conversation with myself in the car.

What are you expecting today?
I just want to get it over with, I said. We've waited for this for six years.
But what do you think is going to happen?
Hopefully, he'll have no reaction. In which case, I'm going to go home and bake a loaf of zucchini bread. WITH EGG. Because it is SO hard to bake without eggs.
But what if he has a reaction? What do you think is going to happen?
Okay, okay, okay. Stop nagging. Maybe he'll have a rash, and I'll keep using baking soda and vinegar in the zucchini bread, and it won't rise, and that's fine. Maybe next year. Now shut up and go away.

Those are the only two possible outcomes I imagined. Leander hasn't had any reactions to egg. Most kids outgrow the egg allergy. His blood test results are low. He's well over the age he should outgrow the allergy. So we test him.

We checked in, and asked how long the process was expected to take. Ouma took Eddie and Oliver and a bag of snacks to the park, with instructions to return in two hours.

The challenge started a little late; they were very busy. All eight chairs in the room were full, some with children having food challenges, and some with children having other treatments. Curiosity nearly kills me in those situations, but it’s none of my business why the small boy has hugely swollen forearms and hands, or why the teenager with the friendly, pleasant expression is such a terrible greenish color.

A lovely nurse (they were all lovely. Nurses are so often lovely) introduced herself and explained the procedure. Then she checked Leander all over for any rashes or marks that he might have before the challenge, so she would be aware of any changes. Leander is a boy, and has two brothers. Ergo, he has marks.

She indicated that the stuff they were going to give him might be yucky. She said they usually mix it with some juice, but CSID means Leander can't have juice.

"He'll be fine," I said. "His name means 'brave man,' and he is."

"Well," she said. "We'll see how that pans out for you today, then, won't we?"

First on the menu was a 5 ml dilution of egg in water, in the ratio of 1 to 100. She gave this to Leander in a syringe, so as to shoot it down his throat a little faster (imagine warm tap water with a bit of egg in it. Yuck doesn't quite describe it.) Wait ten minutes, do observations. We made an origami sperm whale, following directions in an activity book I brought.

Leander had no reaction, so about ten minutes later, she proceeded to step two: a 1 to 10 dilution of egg to water, again 5 mls. The kid next to us left, and the nurse gave us the entertainment center he'd been using. We worked out how to race cars on the Nintendo, and ten minutes later, observations showed no reaction.

Step three is a bit of a jump: 5 mls of raw egg. Yup, icky. But Leander swallowed it like a champ, followed it with a sip of water and a couple of Pringles, and grabbed up the Nintendo controls again. Ouma arrived back with Eddie and Oliver. I stepped into the hallway, about twelve feet away, in full view of Leander (all glass windows and walls, and open doorways) to tell them that the challenge had started a little bit late, and that Leander would be at least another hour. Eddie slipped inside to have a go at the Nintendo, while I chatted with Ouma.

Leander put down his controls (should have been my first hint), got off the cushy recliner, and came to me. He looked absolutely fine, but he said, “Mommy, my chest feels icky.”

Okay. Okay, that’s okay. I think I excused myself from Ouma, but I may have just rudely left. I’m not sure. There weren’t any nurses in the room just then, so I went through to the back room, and said, “Excuse me? Leander says his chest feels icky.”

One of them followed (the lovely nurse who started the challenge had gone off to lunch a little while before), and I persuaded Eddie (with a little bit of pleasantness, and a little bit of a growl) to put down the Nintendo, and go with Ouma. Ouma’s very good at the quiet, quick fade, and she whisked the children back to the park.

Leander looked fine, though he still said his chest felt icky. No, he wasn’t going to throw up. No, he wasn’t having trouble breathing. But his chest still felt icky. Did he feel better, worse, or the same? The same.

But, and this is the most frightening part of all, and should have been our biggest clue: he didn’t want to play Nintendo, and he didn’t want me to put a movie on.

The nurse checked his chest for a telltale rash (he’s never gotten one there, but it’s a major sign of anaphylaxis). Nothing. No rashes on the insides of his elbows, no swelling of his lips, and he still said he wasn’t going to throw up. Better, worse, or the same? The same.

I kept looking at his eyes. They were exactly the same, but... not quite. They weren't (quite) a slight shade of purple. They weren't (quite) swollen at all. They didn't (quite) look a little dark underneath. There wasn't anything there I could point to. He looked exactly the same. Almost.

And then there was a tiny little red mark under his right eye, and he scratched it.

Better, worse, or the same? The same.

And then a small cough, just twice, almost like a clearing of the throat.

The changes after that were so tiny, it was difficult to see them. In fact, the nurses weren’t watching him; one of them decided he might need his inhaler for the cough, and went to phone a doctor for an order. Little tears began to drip from Leander’s eyes, and he asked for a tissue to blow his nose. I stopped going back and forth to the tissue box, and brought it to the chair. I needed more of them for me than for him. If I wasn’t pregnant, I would have been able to stop crying, but as it was, I couldn't. Better, worse, or the same? The same.

I got the order for four puffs of Ventolin, to be given at once, and since I had the inhaler and spacer ready, we did that immediately, Leander taking calm, deep breaths just like he's supposed to. With no effect. Those two little coughs were now coming every five or ten seconds (I’m guessing; time loses a lot of perspective in situations like this). Better, worse or the same? The same.

Another few minutes of coughing, more tears, no other changes: no rash, no swelling. And then... better worse or the same? “Worse.” Did he feel like he might throw up? Yes.

Now, I'm good with all sorts of medical emergencies: bleeding, fainting, injury, needles, whatever. Vomit, however, is not my bag. I ran back to where the nurses were, and, trying to choke words through the tears, said, “Something to throw up in!” What? “Throw up! Bucket! Something!”

I went back to Leander, too aware that the other seven parent/child combinations in the room were picking up on the change in atmosphere very quickly. I felt terrible for the woman next to us, whose very small child had just begun an egg challenge. She spoke almost no English, and must have been terrified at what she was witnessing.

The nurse comes with a disposable bowl-thing, and Leander holds it under his chin. I watch tears fall into it. Another nurse brings an antihistamine, having called the doctor for that order as well. I hold the little plastic cup and Leander gulps it down. It has no effect.

Next thing I realize, there's a half-circle of medical personnel around us. The doctor has arrived (not our doctor, but the fellow, who, I believe, handles all the decisions that arise during these challenges), and stands there with a clipboard. She says, “I can’t order adrenaline at this point.” No swelling, the cough is the same, no rash.

But they all stand there, watching. Leander is crying now, and he says to me, “I want to feel better. I want to feel better!” All those tiny little changes mean that now he's a little purplish around the edges, with a leaky nose and leaky eyes, a slight cough, and a slumped posture.

It's like watching time-lapse photography of a sunflower losing its glory. You don't see it happen as the minutes pass, and then you notice that the color has faded, and the petals have drooped.

Somewhere in there, I look up and see the doctor, literally, drop her jaw as Leander’s oxygen saturation falls to 92%. I refocus on Leander, who says to me, “I want the epi-pen!”

Who would ask for something like that? He’s had adrenaline once before, and it HURTS.

The doctor is next to me now, and I say to her, far more calmly and clearly than I feel, “He’s asking for the epi-pen. I’m not saying you should give it to him just because he’s asking for it, but you should know that he is seriously distressed right now.” A long speech, considering all the hormones welling up in my throat.

She says to me, and she's really listening, “Is he distressed?”

Some of you know Leander, and some of you don’t. Stoic doesn’t begin to describe him. I think if he broke his arm, he’d give a little shake, and insist he was fine (unless Eddie did it to him, in which case he’d scream bloody murder).

I say, “He is a very calm child. Believe me when I tell you he does not react like this. This is him, severely distressed.” I am not the expert, but somebody had better do something SOON. Or else. Or else I might have to actually say out loud what is screaming silently in my head: DO SOMETHING. DO IT.

The cough is just slightly more persistent now, and Leander is more visibly - to me - panicking. This. Is. Not. Right. Things are very definitely - but so very imperceptibly - wrong.

The doctor's lips move very slowly as she says, “Administer adrenaline.”

A nurse has already gotten the epi-pen. Someone says to me, “Do you want to do it?”

I can’t talk at all. I can’t speak. I can’t explain that I've had six years of nightmares about giving him that shot, that I've done it in a million dreams, asleep and awake. That I have, in my head, held that little thigh and plunged in the needle over and over and over, but that I have a terrible block about doing it in real life. That my hugest fear is that I will need to do it, but will be unable to.

It’s not the needle-into-flesh aspect that terrifies me; it’s the fact that my little boy is so close to death, and I need to save his life. Why do I have such a block on that? Isn't that the thing any mother would most want to do? Save her child's life? Why is it so hard? Is it because I so strongly do not want that situation to occur that if I refuse to accept it, it won't be happening?

I nod. Someone asks again, “Do you want to do it?”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes.”

Then the needle is in my hand, open and with the safety removed.

I look straight at Leander. “I’m going to do it, okay?” I say. He nods. “It’s going to hurt,” I tell him. He nods.

Needle in my right hand, I push his shorts out of the way with my left hand. That perfect, soft skin is no accident. Years of diligence and effort made that skin perfect. For the six years I've been fearing this moment, in the second or two it takes my hand to slip up his thigh, it changes from the soft, tiny leg I've practiced on in my head to the strong, long thigh he has spent years developing.

In my head, like I’ve done a million times before, I imagine the line from his kneecap to his hip, and the perpendicular line bisecting it, but I am distracted by the perfect planes of his muscles. Who am I kidding? I know exactly where that needle goes. I could find the spot with my eyes closed.

I put my left index finger on the upper, outer quadrant of his thigh, chanting in my head upper, outer, like I have a million times before. I look up at the woman standing in front of me. She looks blankly at me. I tap my finger, and she nods.

Do I plunge? Or do I place and push firmly? I have held that debate for years, with no resolution. I feel me take hold of myself and make the decision. Slowly, calmly, I place the needle gently on his thigh, I grip his thigh firmly with my left hand so he can’t flinch, and I PUSH.

All there is in the universe is that smooth, hard thigh under my fingers, the firm steady pressure of the needle, and a slow, calm voice in my head counting, “One... two... three...”

But I only get to four, and the same woman who blanked me on the location is pushing my wrist away from his thigh. I hold firm, the needle doesn't waver, and I look up at her. She pushes my wrist again, harder, so I obey, and pull out the needle, and it disappears from my hand.

I hold Leander tight against me. He’d cried out when I pushed the needle in; I could hear the echo of it now that the needle was gone. He was crying still, saying again, “I want to feel better! I want to feel better!”

“You will, baby, you will." I'm holding him tightly. "It takes just a minute." I'm wiping his eyes, wiping my eyes. "Just hold on a minute.” And while I was still talking, I could hear a voice in the semi-circle say, “That worked. Look at his pulse now - 162.”

And finally the tiniest of shifts, and the panic in Leander's cries slips away. Another voice says, “There it is.”

"I am so sorry, baby," I whisper into his ear.

"Thank you for doing it," he says back to me.

And it's over. Observations were done every minute, then every five minutes, then he picked up the Nintendo and only hit pause every fifteen minutes for his blood pressure, pulse and oxygen levels. He had to wait four hours to be sure he didn't have a rebound reaction, and then, when everyone else had packed up and gone, we were allowed to leave.

During that long wait, I took Oliver to his appointment at the allergist (whose offices are across the street). He tells me, immediately, that I deserve a G&T, or, at the very least, to put my feet up for a while. The doctor who ordered the adrenaline told him I did a great job, that Leander and I were both very brave, that because of us, he's going to review with all staff and make it a priority to have the parent administer the epi-pen. I am empowered. I have DONE IT.

He apologizes for anaphylaxing my child (he makes it a verb, and it works for him). But it's not his fault, it was a risk, the test had to be done, and I don't blame him one bit. I appreciate his compassion. He tells me they administer adrenaline about once a month. This is intended as comfort, but I am appalled that Leander is one of the tiny few.

He performs a skin prick test on Oliver, on the basis that, at the age of four and a half, Oliver would have had some accidental exposure to peanut and egg (why do people persist in underestimating me? No accidental exposure is allowed in my world). I think he is unwilling to subject me to another challenge in three weeks, which is what he told us, more than a year ago, we would do with Oliver. Both skin tests are negative, and we have no reason to believe Oliver has any allergies. The test has only been done because the school has given us such problems, and we need to know where we stand before Oliver starts going. The doctor, who got us through the last hassle with the school, tells me that if we have any further troubles, a letter to the Minister will do the trick. He gives me instructions for working out Eddie's reactions to fish, and the name of an allergist for Duncan's bee stings, and he confirms that I should have held the needle in till the count of ten (surmising that perhaps that woman had counted VERY quickly), and we're done. We will see him again in two years.

My sister-in-law arrives to pick up Eddie, Oliver and Ouma (who has been sitting with Leander while I was at the allergist), and I sit with Leander and the Nintendo to wait out the rest of the four hours.

We did it, my little boy and I. He told me he needed to be saved, and I saved him. And I don't care how it sounds for me to say it: I am damn proud of us both.

Stuck With The Turkeys

It's Thanksgiving, a day that always makes me sad when I'm out of the country. I just heard a radio DJ say it's okay to eat any food you see today, to cram yourself full of any old crap, and if anyone says anything to you, you should just tell them, "It's okay! It's Thanksgiving! The Americans are doing it!"

Foreigners just don't get it.

I feel really strongly about Thanksgiving, and when the atmosphere is missing, it leaves a horrible void. It's a day to spend with as much family as possible, no matter how dysfunctional that family might be. When I was growing up, we often spent the day with my father's first family, which meant a bizarre combination of me, my mom, my dad, his first wife, their children, and their children's children, most of whom were older than me, and who started bringing their own kids as they had them (my father's great-grandchildren - I was in my teens). We'd all gather in the fire station across the road from my half-sister's house, and the chaos in there was awesome (by which I mean "awe-inspiring" as opposed to "rad, dude.") As an only child (in my father's second family, if that makes any sense), I was usually lonely, and life was very quiet. Claiming all that color as my family - albeit slightly DISTANT family, and just once or twice a year - added facets to my otherwise boring person, I felt. It was like being the baffled participating audience member in an intricately choreographed dance.

(My half-sister has probably spewed coffee across her screen by now. I somehow feel sure that my memories of those occasions have a slightly rosier glow than hers...)

For my first Thanksgiving in South Africa, my husband's family very gamely went along with a "proper" Thanksgiving meal. Their enthusiasm touched me (and still does, eleven years later), but there's something about having everybody working on a day that should be a massive holiday for everyone, regardless of race, religion, or personal beliefs, that's just not right. It's the atmosphere that's missing.

I think one thing that a lot of foreigners don't understand is that Americans are proud, yes, and we work hard to be the best we can be, but that we judge ourselves against ourselves, nobody else. Being proud of who we are doesn't mean we think less of anyone else. We just don't think in terms like that. It's not a competition for us, so nobody wins and nobody loses. We're far from perfect, but we keep working to get there. I can't seem to adequately explain that here.

Anyway, I'm going to make a pumpkin pie today. I normally wouldn't ever use canned pumpkin for this - I always roast my own - but since the right kind of pumpkin isn't available, I'll open one of the huge cans of pumpkin puree that I brought here with me.

A friend told me yesterday that Martha has been baking up a storm all week (I'm still cross with her about the Katonah incident). My friend says Martha drains her pumpkin puree in cheesecloth overnight. I see the point of that: to thicken it. But I've always preferred the flavor and texture of moist, fresh pumpkin. If it's too thick, it'll taste like the canned stuff I'm being forced to use.

I've never made a pumpkin pie with fructose, though I think it will be okay. The thing about fructose is, it's not sweet when it's warm, only when it's cool. So I'll cook the pie, and then have to let it cool completely before eating it, which is a shame, since it's so delicious warm. Of course, it's delicious cold the next day, too. Actually, I could screw up the recipe a fair bit, and it'd still be great. Pumpkin pie just is.

This is my egg-free recipe, which I've been using for years. The original recipe, from The Joy of Cooking, makes an amazing pumpkin custard, but eggs are still off-limits, and the cornstarch works. I might have to play around with the sweetness of the pie, since these amounts of fructose and Karo are guesses. I like to use Karo when I can, since Leander has a high tolerance for it (Karo is basically high-fructose corn syrup), and it adds some of the gooey texture you'd get from real sugar, particularly if you're trying to use dextrose as a substitute for sugar. With fructose, maybe I don't really need the Karo, but I'm going to use it anyway, particularly since I've substituted the eggs with cornstarch. I might decide later that I should have used dextrose instead of the Karo, but we'll have to wait and see.

I won't bother making my own pie crust this year. Homemade crust is delicious, but I find it's rarely worth the effort. Locally, there's a "savoury" frozen crust. You could probably use the sweet one, but it's got sugar in it, and the savory frozen one they sell here has a crunchy texture that is really very nice.

If you use real cornstarch, and not the kind made with wheat, and a gluten-free crust, this pie would be gluten-free. Also, I'm sure the milk and butter could be substituted for a dairy-free pie. I'd never do that, since we don't need to avoid dairy, and I think the real milk and butter add a necessary richness, but basically, you could adjust this recipe for a lot of different dietary restrictions.

Here it is:

Sucrose-free, egg-free, nut-free pumpkin pie:

2 cups cooked, pureed pumpkin
1 cup milk
3/4 cup fructose
1/4 cup Karo light syrup
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp butter, melted

Mix all, pour into unbaked pie crust.
Let sit in refrigerator overnight before baking, if possible.
Bake at 450 for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and bake one hour.
Allow to cool mostly before serving, though it's nice warm.

Serve it with fresh whipped cream, which I make. Fructose added to freshly whipped cream is absolutely delicious. In fact, I'd probably choose to use fructose even if I could use regular sugar.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Recipe: Grandpa Ed's Waffles

As I mentioned, Leander and I both went to the doctor on Tuesday. My appointment was great: we heard the baby's heartbeat, even though the doctor said it was a bit early and he wasn't sure if we would, and it was a "nice, strong heartbeat." Also cool was the fact that I still haven't gained any weight. At 21 weeks pregnant, I am nine pounds lighter than I was at five weeks pregnant. I'm only losing the weight I gained during Oliver's pregnancy, and the doctor is completely happy with the state of my health.

Leander and I both needed blood tests. Mine was to check up on a previously low iron level, and Leander's were for everything but the prostate screening, I think. We're a little concerned that with his limited diet, he might be missing some nutrients. It's been two years since he was diagnosed with CSID, and he's been a little tired lately, not quite himself. Also, fructose can build up in the liver like alcohol, and since that's the sugar he uses every day, it's a good idea to have a liver function test done.

Our tradition is that if you get a needle stuck in you, Mommy buys you something at the toy tore, mostly because Mommy is a sucker. Because Leander is the one who always gets the horrible things done to him, he's the one who gets all the treats. The other two understand this, though they would like to get the treats, too. They agree, though, that it's not worth getting poked with a needle.

But Leander said, this time, "Can we buy three treats, so Eddie and Oliver can have one, too?"

Which opens up all sorts of philosophical avenues.

If they all get treats, it kind of defeats the point of the treat. And will the other two start hoping Leander gets poked with a needle so they can have a new little tractor?

But Leander himself has requested equal treats for his brothers, and I hate to discourage that kind of philanthropic spirit.

What to do?

We've been talking about buying an ice cream machine, because ice cream is one of the boys' favorite things, and there's a place in Hilarys that makes one with fructose (for diabetics, which I don't quite understand, but I'm no dietitian). But it's $12 a liter, and it's made with soy milk, to cover lots of dietary requirements. I'm not so big on the soy milk. Also, it's hard for us to get, being in Hilarys and all. So after a month or two of batting the idea around, I made the executive decision to order the ice cream maker. Wandering around the appliance store while the guy was on the phone with another customer, I passed a waffle maker, one that makes a flower of five hearts. My dad gave me one like that for my birthday one year. I've never understood why he bought me a waffle maker, but he picked it out all by himself, and maybe I liked it even more because of the mystery. I couldn't bring it to Australia because of the power thing, and it's one of the few bits we left behind that I really miss.

That was way too much detail about why I wanted a waffle maker all of a sudden.

Anyway, the boys love pancakes, the American way, that is: for breakfast, hot, with maple syrup and bacon on a lazy Sunday morning. So I asked Leander if we should get a waffle maker for everyone as the treat. He happily agreed. We had waffles for dinner that night, but the waffle recipe in the waffle maker box was a bit floppy, not crispy like I like them.

Today, nearly eleven years after my dad died, I cried all the way back from the next town over. I think it was triggered by extreme exhaustion, and thinking of the daughter of the electrician I like so much. I saw her yesterday, and the obvious affection with which she spoke of her father made my eyes leak, though I blamed it on pregnancy hormones to cover my embarrassment. My dad was an electrician, too, and I miss him just as much now as I have for the last eleven years.

On that half-hour drive today, it occurred to me, for the first time, that my father must have thought, at some point in his life, about the fact that he would be 87 when I was 37, and that the odds of him knowing me for much more than thirty years were pretty slim.

That makes me incredibly sad.

So in honor of my father, who I think about every day, we're having waffles again tomorrow morning, and here's my own recipe in all its nut-free, egg-free, sucrose-free glory:

2 cups flour
4 tbsp dextrose
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp lemon juice
1¾ cups milk
4 tbsp melted butter
a dollop of glucose

Melt butter, milk and glucose together. I'm not listing a measurement for glucose, because you could spend a LOT of time trying to get it to cooperate while you try to measure it. Be sure to melt it, though, since otherwise you'll have a lot of semi-sweet waffles, and one glucose-waffle.

Sift dry ingredients.

Add butter, milk and lemon juice to dry ingredients and mix well. Allow to rest for ten minutes.

Pour by 1/4 cupfuls onto medium hot waffle maker and cook until nicely brown. Serve with real maple syrup for the people who can handle sucrose, and with Karo syrup for the people who can't.

Stay tuned for an ice cream recipe, though there will no doubt be a fair bit of trial and error involved in that one...

It's Like I'm Famous!

So I've been just typing away at my little blog, entertaining my friends and family overseas. I forget to post a lot, and then a friend emails me and says, "Hey, post!" so I do.

And all this time, I've had FANS! There are whole bunches of people who find the trivia in my life so fascinating that they are eagerly checking to see if I have a new post! Oh, it's water-cooler time, for sure!

I'm flattered that you all find me so interesting!

Anyhoo... Since I have your attention:

All that crap you're hearing? All those rumors? Seriously. One of my faults is that I always think the best of people, even people who truly don't deserve it. It's especially sad for me, since, because of that, I'm so frequently disappointed by people. I have to say, it surprises me how many of you are willing to think the worst of me at a moment's notice. Would I seriously say nasty things about people on a blog that (in spite of an anonymous accusation that I am "hiding behind" my blog - that irony is too precious to NOT share it with you) can be read by every single English-reading person with internet access In The Entire World? Yeah, and I also demanded a 200 meter peanut-free perimeter zone around both the school and my shop last year, making it impossible for any shop in town to sell peanut products, and impossible for any travelers to drive through town if there was so much as a Snickers in their car.

People, I couldn't come up with that kind of crap if I tried. The person who did should be applauded for her creativity and imagination. And then be made to immediately begin using her talents for good, rather than evil.

Ditto the "nasty" comments. Is it nasty to tell you that I cried? Is it nasty to tell you that we got a lot of phone calls?

Yeah. I don't think so. But if you all keep chattering away about it amongst each other, pretty soon you'll have me drowning puppies and plotting against the government. Trust me when I tell you that I don't have that kind of free time.

And when I started to hear about all these "nasty" things I supposedly wrote, I was concerned. For about ten minutes. Because as far as I knew, I hadn't written anything nasty. But maybe my perception was off? I've spent the day showing people what I actually wrote - completely unmodified, not a comma changed (I think, if you haven't learned anything else, you should have learned by now that I am nothing if not honest). I've had people laughing, and suggesting that I publish the post in a newspaper, and every single person, without exception, has said that there isn't a nasty word in there. It is, by all accounts, a silly story about a horrible week.

So the person who greeted me with a cat's bum mouth in the bank? Every person is entitled to his or her own opinion, absolutely. It's a human right. I might caution you, however, that if you're basing your opinion on rumors rather than facts, you're only going to make a fool of yourself, not me. How many of you actually read the post, and how many of you just heard other people talking about it?

But hey! As long as you're entertained! Because let's not forget, that's what a blog is all about.

Let's talk about important stuff now. Leander had the beginnings of an anaphylactic attack last week. Wouldn't you find it more interesting and fulfilling to read about our frantic dash to the hospital than to do your laundry? Or to write a letter for Amnesty International? Or to crochet a chemo-cap for a cancer patient? Or to knit a little jumper for those poor African AIDS babies? Or maybe you could make a casserole for a house-bound neighbor or relative? Or clean out your pantry and donate some canned goods to that scheme run by the school's chaplain for Christmas boxes to disadvantaged children? Or just sit on the floor with your own child and a box of crayons and doodle some pages for him or her to color in?

Oh, never mind. You know you're going to just sit there and keep reading this page. Hey, I might mention YOU in here.

At bowls last Thursday night, during the presentations, Leander, outside, started to cry. Not so unusual in itself: a lot of crying gets done in a house full of boys. But he has a special undertone to a cry that I couldn't begin to describe. I can only tell you that when he hits that barely perceptible tone, I pay attention.

He wanted to go to the hospital. Immediately. That's not a request he ever makes, since he has a lot of needles stuck into him a lot of the time. He couldn't tell me what was wrong, and he wasn't showing any symptoms at all, as far as I could tell. But he wanted to go to the hospital, and my strongest belief on this earth is that
a parent needs to provide what a child needs, so that child can learn to identify and provide for his own needs when he grows up. If he wants to go to the hospital, he needs to know that I'll take him seriously, and that he should take his own instincts seriously.

We rushed to the hospital, and I said into the intercom, "Anaphylactic child! Please let us in!" Leander still showed no signs of anaphylaxis, but didn't feel well, and I wasn't taking any chances. His pulse was 136. The nurse (one of my favorites, who remembered me from last year when I brought Duncan in, suffering from serious anaphylactic shock due to a bee sting) was very thorough and attentive. Still no other symptoms, though she agreed that bringing him in and waiting there was the right thing to do. After a while, Leander's pulse dropped to about 100, and he got very sleepy. When we felt safe, we went home.

We saw our doctor yesterday, and he felt strongly that yes, it was the initial stages of anaphylaxis. He said his patients often report a sense of something wrong deep inside before there are any symptoms at all. On the way home from the hospital, Leander said to me that there was a boy at bowls who he didn't know well, and he thought maybe that boy had eaten something that wasn't Leander-safe. I don't think that's true (the boy is the child of a conscientious mother), but I like that Leander himself is trying to speculate the cause of his reaction. He didn't eat anything at bowls other than the ham sandwich I'd made for him (from ingredients he's had many times before). One of the most frustrating things about anaphylaxis is that we can't pinpoint exactly what caused it, and we can't say how close is too close, since testing that line would most likely be fatal. We just have to be glad that he was fine, that our healthy little boy is not in a coma, or worse. Those close calls are exhausting for everyone.

Two percent of children in our state are at risk of anaphylaxis. The Anaphylaxis Expert Working Committee recently discovered that the restrictions on children at risk give them a quality of life lower than children with rheumatoid arthritis or diabetes. Think about that for a minute.

Alan Carpenter recently approved, and committed $6.6 million to, all eight recommendations made by the Anaphylaxis Expert Working Committee. You can read about it here. And I hope a certain principal DOES read about it, and sees that it will be required of him to practice risk management for children at risk of anaphylaxis in schools. That's ALL children at risk - whether it's food, or bees, or whatever, risk management is required, and will be audited.

One of the recommendations is aimed at community awareness. I like to think I've done my part to raise community awareness. There are a lot of really supportive people out there, and now a lot more of them are aware of anaphylaxis. Sadly, the five percent of people who are complete fuckwits about it are usually the only ones who make a lot of noise.

Likewise, at least 90% of what you hear is a lot of crap. Trust me: my life is too boring for you to find it so interesting without a LOT of embellishment.

And while you're listening, let me tell you that I never, ever, not once did I demand that the school do ANYTHING AT ALL to protect Leander. I wrote on Eddie's enrollment form: It is imperative that Eddie not bring home any traces of peanuts because of his brother's severe allergy. The school decided to immediately put into place provisions for a risk management program, in order to protect Leander, who would begin school six months later. I can only fault them for letting people think I had demanded this. The school administration, rightfully, in my opinion, decided that the best thing for THEM, the best way to provide duty of care to ALL students, and to protect their teachers from a situation that could be catastrophic, was to put into place these policies.

Let me say that again: by asking parents not to send in peanut products, the school is not only protecting Leander, but is protecting the teachers and all the other children. When parents send in peanuts, not only are they putting Leander's life at risk, they are increasing the stress levels of the teachers and aides, who would be required to act in an emergency. If the teachers and aides are forced to think about this for a large portion of their day, they are less able to concentrate on their jobs, and less able to concentrate on all children equally.

Do you get that? Risk management helps protect everyone. Would you like your child to witness the horror of a classmate suffering anaphylactic shock? Would you like your child's teacher to be so obsessed with keeping one child alive during lunch times that she can't focus on all the other children in the room? What if it was your child's lunch that caused Leander serious injury? How easy do you think it would be to convince your child that it wasn't his or her fault? Why put your child in that kind of position?

That woman who made her kid bring peanuts to school, in spite of the fact that, as the child herself told me, she doesn't like peanuts? What would she say to her child if her little act of defiance had killed someone?

And I'll tell you what, if I hear ONE MORE TIME that crap about how kids with anaphylaxis "need to learn to live in the world," I might just scream. Kids at risk of anaphylaxis learn more about living in the world in their first five years than other kids do in their first fifteen. There are guns in the world, too. Do children need to learn to live in the world with guns? Should we just plonk a loaded AK-47 down on the kindy lunch table and tell them all not to touch it? A loaded gun is as dangerous to your kid as a peanut butter sandwich is to my kid. The only difference is that the bullet might MISS your kid.

We ARE teaching Leander how to live in the world. We're also teaching YOUR children how to live in the world. Your children are learning tolerance. Something a lot of you could stand to pick up yourselves.

I'm entitled to my bad days. And if I want to tell the world about them (or at least, the few people who are listening, by their own choice), that's my right. It's your right, too. Start your own blog. And if you've read all this and something has made you unhappy, don't complain to me; you've wasted your own time. A last thought: Every time you tell another person about this blog, you give me a little more power. Do you want to do that?

Thanks for listening. I really do, sincerely, appreciate it. Go do something useful now.

Because Fintan Needs A Birthday Cake

My friend Alina wants to make a low-allergen, healthy birthday cake for her son's first birthday. He doesn't have any allergies that they are aware of, but I may have freaked her out enough with my horror stories about our experiences over the last several years... so she's being really careful. And if I'm honest, which I can't always be, because people don't REALLY want honesty when it's inconvenient, I wish all parents were like Alina. It can prevent your child from having lifelong, life-threatening allergies, if you just hold off feeding them the seven major allergens until they reach the age of three, when their little immune systems may have matured to the point where they are able to react properly to the allergens, even if they might otherwise have been prone to allergies.

And now I'm off on my little lecture. Just one more minute: Obviously, it's hard (if not impossible) to avoid all seven allergens for three years. Avoid them for the first year, and then avoid the ones in your family history, which for us means eggs and nuts, until the child is three. And of course, it's also important to avoid eating these allergens if you are pregnant or breastfeeding and the baby has a family history of allergies.

And don't complain to me that it's hard, because I've done it. It's not that hard, people. Not nearly as hard as imagining yourself plunging a huge, scary Epi-pen into your baby's sweet little thigh while he chokes and gasps for breath and clings desperately to life.

Right! Enough drama; onto important things, like chocolate!

This recipe is some sort of wartime, rationing recipe. In fact, I used to make it all the time even before we had children (before I even knew that egg *was* an allergen), because it was cheap (and ingredients in South Africa were expensive), ridiculously easy, and really moist and delicious. The only major allergen it contains is wheat, and by the time your child is one, you usually know if he's had a reaction to wheat (and you could substitute the flour with whatever flour substitute you usually use). The recipe is dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, and effort-free. You don't even need a mixer.

1½ cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
¼ cup cocoa powder
½ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp vinegar (white)
½ cup oil (I use canola)
1 cup water

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, in no particular order, and bake at 375 (or 180 C) for 35-40 minutes. I have three kids and a husband, so I always double the recipe and bake it for 40-45 minutes. As it's written above, it will fill an 8x8 baking dish. Use an 8x13 if you double the recipe.

We modify the recipe further to suit our specific dietary needs, by which I mean we use alternative sugars, and we add dairy to it (because my children and husband all have a tendency to lose weight, damn them).

So I use dextrose instead of sugar (dextrose can usually be found in the home brewing supplies), and half again as much glucose syrup (which can be found in the candy-making supplies). And I use some percentage of milk instead of water (half and half, usually). I also replace some of the oil with melted butter (never margarine). Those substitutions took a lot of fiddling with (the sugar ones, that is), but I have finally managed to bake a moist cake with just the right amount of sweetness, and it's incredible how satisfying that is.

I make a frosting with Nuttelex (which, surprisingly, contains no nuts - it's a margarine), cream cheese, dextrose, fructose, and food coloring. But before we knew about the CSID, we just bought Betty Crocker's ready-made frosting. For a one-year-old, frosting is completely unnecessary, though it does add value to the photo opportunities, particularly if it's inhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif the hair. You could just apply it directly there to save your child's teeth.

Happy Birthday, Fintan!

By Request

My fan base has begun! Post more often, you say? Prepare for the rambling!

First of all: good news. Well, good news for us, though I can't really say it's good news for the other kid. The town has a new police sergeant, and though they say he's really good, I say it doesn't matter HOW good if he doesn't stay. There have been two sergeants in the three years I've lived here, and there were long periods of time in between where there wasn't any sergeant at all. And we wonder why the crime is so bad?

But I digress.

The point is that this new sergeant has a son. A son with a nut allergy! Why is that such good news, you ask? Because I think the likelihood of Leander being threatened with physical harm by certain adults in this town, as well as the likelihood of him being further discriminated against by the school principal (or The Wanker, as I prefer to call him) is now greatly reduced.

So, you know, I feel for the child, his family, blah-blah-blah, but just let that bitch try sending peanuts to school NOW.

(For those of you who haven't heard the story a million times already, I'll give you the short version: a six-year-old girl said to me one day, "Mummy packed peanuts in my lunchbox today. I don't like peanuts. Mummy says I don't have to eat them, but I have to bring them to school." Mummy is an ex-military woman who needs a hobby. Something other than pretending we don't exist, and threatening the lives of small children.)

Anyway.

In other good news, also police related, we now know the name of the punk who kicked the crap out of our fence a couple of weeks ago. Because he's a minor, the police weren't allowed to tell us who it was, though they did say they'd charged him. But the laws here are idiotic, and because he's not 18, all they can do is give him a warning. Who's responsible for the damage? Nobody. The police say, "You've got insurance, right?" But I'll be damned if I'm going to pay a deductible and higher premiums because some wingnut dented eight panels of the tin part of our fence.

Especially when the wingnut was enough of an idiot to do this in front of witnesses.

What really pisses us off is that this little bastard and his friends (all little bastards, the lot of them) come into the butcher shop for free meat to use to trap yabbies. And then they destroy our fence? Dude, wrong person to fuck with. I'm not my father's daughter for nothing. Happily for us, we're told that the wingnut's mother would actually be disappointed in him (one of her 13 children) for doing this, so it's possible that we may even get something out of it. Most of the other wingnuts have abusive drug addicts for parents, and visiting them would be completely pointless.

But don't get me started on why they're all such useless idiots. I'd have to carry on at length about welfare, and taking away people's reasons for existing, etc, etc.

In other crime-related news, Duncan and I have volunteered to be on the committee (of five) who will be setting up the new Neighborhood Watch organization in our town. There was an informational meeting last night, where we learned that Kojonup (pop. 2,000) has had 1/3 as many burglaries so far this year as Albany (pop. 30,000). Those are not good ratios. My shop has been broken into twice in just over a year, and now our fence has been vandalized. Speaking of people needing hobbies...

I could go on and on, but I'm not being particularly witty or insightful today, so there's no pointhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif. I'll leave you with Oliver's comment from a minute ago, when he was reading my email with me, and he saw a woman modeling a knitted shawl:

"She looks very vee-u-tible, and very weird. She's lips look very weird. Your eyes are a bit purplish, Mommy."

(Speaking of my eyes, p.s. to Stephen: You missed my point, clearly. If I am slightly on the Linda Evangelista end of the Linda:Adolph scale, you are slightly on the Brad Pitt end of the Brad:Jabba scale. But only slightly. And I'm still holding firm to the idea that I am, indeed, on the Linda half of that scale, no matter how you insult me by insinuating otherwise.)

A Tuesday I Wouldn't Revisit

All day Monday, and all Monday night, I dreaded Tuesday, for three reasons:

1) I was scheduled to teach a class in felting a the local old folks' home, and the activities director made me nervous about the old folks.
2) I had a dentist appointment, to see if I had my first-ever cavity.
3) I left Leander, my peanut-anaphylactic child, at an all-day footy clinic without me.

So when it was finally all over and

1) the old folks were a riot, particularly one grumpy woman who complained about everything in between naps,
2) it's not a cavity, just a sensitivity caused by the cold I've had or well over two weeks, and
3) Leander was completely fine

you'd think I'd have been happy. But we got home to find that someone had kicked in several panels of the tin part of our fence. Little bastards. I called the police, because I'm sick to death of these kids getting away with everything, and the girl next door came out to describe the boys she saw doing it. Miracles will never cease. I didn't still didn't expect anything to come of it, since I've been broken into twice, and the cops have done NOTHING, but we heard today that they have arrested someone. They won't tell us who yet, since the kid is a minor, but we'll find out more on Friday, and I think there might be a way to eventually get the kid's family to pay up. We'll see.

But the old folks, they were hysterical (well, I don't think *they* thought they were, but I was highly entertained). We made felted balls, which are ridiculously easy and involve flexing your hands in warm water - good therapy for old joints - for them to use later on in their exercises. Or for pincushions, said the activities director. Yes, but not both simultaneously, I pointed out.

There were a couple of women who actively enjoyed it, and one man who did, too. There were a couple who tried really hard with very little success (limited motion in their hands, or limited sight), and there was that one lady who hated every minute of it and never stopped complaining (in between falling asleep), except to giggle once, which made it all worth it. She was a riot, and I think it would have been a bit dull without her complaining, and another woman rolling her eyes, oh, it was funny. I even told her to stop being so grouchy, and she nearly cracked a smile. Apparently, she hates to have her hands in anything, even hand cream, so she didn't want to stick her hands in the soapy water to do the felting. I threatened her with finger-painting for our next activity.

I've never been to that dentist before. I had the dark protective glasses on, and two little masked Asian faces bent over me, performing a delicately choreographed dance with suction tubes and tooth polishers, talking gently in not-English. It was all very Lost in Translation.

It was a bummer after all that to spend the night feeling violated and powerless. I had to keep reminding myself that we have very sharp knives and an easy way to dispose of bones and meat scraps.

What's With The Eggs, Isaac?

Fig Newtons don't have eggs. Why do all the recipes I find have eggs in the Newtons? Why do all the recipes on earth have fricking eggs in them?

I'm not opposed to eggs. Not at all. Especially since two years ago when we learned they were no longer violent killer allergens (for us, for our six-year-old son. For others, they are still violent killer allergens). For us they are now simply hanging-over-the-toilet-for-45-while-the-antihistamines-kick-in allergens.

I need a Newton. And I can't go to Price Chopper and buy some because my local Price Chopper is 11, 669 miles away (not an estimate - I checked), and also because I can't digest the sugar in them. Figs are one of the few fruits with very low amounts of sucrose in them, but neither Leander nor I really want to eat the figs. I want the Newtons (Leander is blissfully ignorant, happily for him).

I'm really not into this whole Easter thing. What with being anti-religion and all, and now with the sugar, the eggs, the nuts, the carcinogenic poisonous "may leek out of your butt" chemical sweeteners. But before, in my stupidity, before the CSID, before the Outback, when I thought I was so clever with the Easter, I conditioned my children to hear Easter and think little-plastic-eggs-with-mini-oreos-inside. Poor planning. Very poor planning.

So I've just made (very, icky, dark) purple copha (google that one), cream cheese, and coconut mound-things, and "White Christmas: as modified by Amy to be brown and made with horrible organic puffed rice things I swore I would never make my children eat." I have sugar-substitution down to a fine art (use the same amount of dextrose, and add half again as much fructose, increase the liquid a bit, and LEAVE OUT ALL SALT - don't ask me why, just DO it), so actually, they're not bad.

They're not Easter, but then, I'm not down with the rising of Christ. So... fitting, I suppose.

But the Newtons. I'm sad about the Newtons. I found a recipe for Honey Newtons that doesn't have egg in it... but it has a cup of grated CHEDDAR CHEESE. WHAT GIVES? I love the lactose, but not in my Newton.

I am sad. I will make the brownies, and the brownies will cheer me up, but the packet of dried figs on my counter will mock me.