Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Adventures in snow and allergies

Feb 19, 2014
Day 271

Adventures in allergies....

We've had a good run the last few weeks - no issues to speak of and we've gone up to 900 and today 1200mg of Walnut powder.  One of our buddies (thanks LK!) took a walnut half into their work lab to weigh it so we'd have a better idea of what we are "eating" vs a whole...  The one she weighed was 2.85 grams for a half. (But that's what most folks would call 1 walnut).  So he's up to over 1/3. :)  That's pretty amazing.  Now I still have no idea what would happen with a pecan or hazelnut, and don't intend to find out anytime soon!  But that's great progress...  "Life" insurance - right? We figured this is a 6 year adventure we're on, and we're not even at a year yet.



Our snow adventures were interesting.  The allergist ran low on the walnut powder again two weeks ago.  So the monday before the snowstorm (last week), they didn't have it yet.  Tuesday they had it but closed early b/c of the bad weather coming in (which didn't hit but I don't blame them for closing).  They've changed suppliers for their walnut powder, so maybe this will stop happening now?  I hope so, it causes a LOT of parental stress!  Wed morning they had planned to be closed but we called and caught them there and Daniel zipped over there to get the doses.  Then the 2" in 2 hours hit.  While everybody was trying to get home.  Daniel got stuck in the crazy traffic but thankfully was almost home when all the streets turned into parking lots.  He stopped at the local bank and walked the last bit home with the meds.  You do what you have to do, but on some level you have to laugh.  He came in covered in snow (much to my amusement).  Then thursday the preventative asthma inhaler ran dry and I had to venture to the drugstore (but could easily have walked it).  Why there is no counter on the QVAR inhaler I have no idea, but I'm going to email them.  We also set up an automatic refill on it and they will notify us when it's ready so that won't happen again.

The new walnut powder is coarser than the old, but we kept a very close eye on him for the first dose, and nothing seemed amiss.  He's been on that for the last week or so and it's going fine.

Cool stuff - Epinephrine and school stocking info - this is a pretty darn good article about epinephrine in general, why it's important, and legislation across the US to make it available for the 25% of emergencies that are unknown/new reactions in schools.  Right now depends on where you live if a school nurse or staffer could give your kid an epi shot without a prescribed dose for your child.  Kids have died because these laws weren't clear and epi was available (another child's Rx) and wasn't used.  Stock epi solves that problem.  (unprescribed epinephrine available in schools).  With the increase in allergies, this stuff should be in public places, just like heart defibrillators.  It is the ONLY thing that can stop an anaphylactic allergic reaction.  Now that we're about to enter public schools I'm seeing just how scary the lack of clear policies can be.  NC needs to catch up to the rest of the US and get some clear laws in place to allow stock epinephrine and to protect those that have to administer it.

Fun snow stuff - we finally got the kids skiing this weekend (in NC) - shockingly the conditions were awesome.  We've created two little ski monsters though!  We had no troubles with allergy stuff with ski school, but we had to be creative on how to keep epis in the temp range while skiing.  (inside backpacks under jackets for instance).  It all worked out.

Stay safe friends!


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