Feeling Like a Failure

As a food allergy parent, much of your life and even much of your identity becomes keeping your child safe from what he or she is allergic to. When you fail at that job it can be devastating. Not only do you feel like a failure, but your child may no longer feel completely safe with the one person who was always his safety net.

This happened at our house Saturday evening.

Last week I received an email with an updated list of products not containing gluten from Frito Lay. Now most of their products are "processed on equipment that processes wheat" and because my son is so severely allergic we've stayed away from any of those products. But now that he's getting older we thought that we might loosen the reigns a little bit and let him try a few and see how he did with them. I noticed on the list that plain Lays chips would be OK to try and I mentioned that to my husband who was standing in the kitchen. I also mentioned that "some Doritos might be OK" but due to the fact that he as other allergies (egg and tree nut) we need to read all of the labels. My husband heard "Doritos" and assumed that the safe ones were the regular ones. He was wrong. And he didn't read the label. Wrong again. And I didn't question him. I was wrong (but I hate questioning everything he does, but I will from now on). And my son ate them. And he had an allergic reaction. Because we made a mistake.

Luckily it was not anaphylactic, but it was severe. It was halted with Benadryl, but I was ready to use the EPI Pen and would have if things escalated even one notch.

Both my husband and I have tremendous guilt that we let our son down. We realize that it wasn't anything that we did on purpose and that this was our first real mistake in five years, but mistakes can lead to death. Our son on the other hand was frightened on Saturday when it happened but seemed to bounce back the next day. He still seems to trust us even if I'm not sure I trust myself.

Looking on the bright side of things, even though he's still allergic to wheat, the reaction wasn't anaphylactic. And I realize that every reaction can be different but the fact that THIS one wasn't anaphylactic was a positive. And I bet my husband won't forget to read labels anymore. And I bet I won't feel funny about questioning his food allergy parenting skills (and he's a great food allergy parent! It's just that I'm the one that usually takes the lead role).

So how do you recover from letting your child down? How do start trusting yourself again after you make a mistake that causes your child to have a reaction?

For more information see:

WEGO Health's Child Food Allergy Page

WEGO Health's Severe Allergic Reaction Page

Read the label, Damn It from Ann at the Food Allergies to Go Blog - Ann gives her suggestions on WHO should read the label and when

How to read food labels for allergies from About.com - Food Allergies