pediatric allergist Dr. Per Lidman
I have lived with a rather severe nut allergy all my life. I don’t worry about it too much, because the nut in question is the Brazil nut. Easy to identify, and not that common. My kids however have allergies to peanuts, which is a real shame. Anyway, when the director for Anaphylaxis Canada called me to see if I was available to make some images at their event, I was eager to go and check it out. There were some excellent speakers, and really good information there. I have always been a bit leary of the whole epi-pen thing, and would rather just ‘wait it out’ but after going to the conference, I am secretly hoping to have a reaction so that I can try it out. Sounds crazy, but I would have to give it to myself before I would be comfortable giving it to someone else. There were testimonials from kids who had to do it, and they all said it was not as bad as they thought it would be, and they felt better right away. One father who had my ‘wait it out’ approch but took his son to the hospital said that had he known how fast the epi-pen would make his son better, he would have done it right away. The 15 minutes of suffering his son had going to the hospital was way worse than the epi-pen, and once they gave his son epinepherine at the hospital he was fine in just a few seconds. So let that be a lesson to all of you who do have allergies, don’t fear the pen!
