Thursday, January 29, 2015

Growing Up With Severe Food Allergies

Millions of children in America have food allergies, some so severe that they can result in anaphylaxis – a life-threatening allergic reaction. In the following interviews, three teenagers share how they survived anaphylaxis episodes and how they manage their meals…

Kylie Gilligan was 3 years old when she ate some cashews and had a life-threatening allergic reaction. For Halle Nagorsky, salmon was the trigger at age 7. And for Abby Miller, then 8, the culprit was was egg whites in the icing on a gingerbread house.

Anaphylaxis is a severe allergic reaction, most often triggered by peanuts, tree nuts, fish and shellfish, medications or insect venom. It can cause symptoms ranging from itching and hives to dizziness and trouble breathing, resulting in more than 200,000 emergency room visits per year.

Without proper treatment, extreme episodes of anaphylaxis can be fatal.

That creates a lot of worry for some of the 6 million U.S. children who have food allergies, along with their parents, according to the nonprofit group Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE). The anxiety creeps into their everyday life – at school, restaurants, birthday parties and on airplanes.

Kylie, 18, of Ann Arbor, Mich., Halle, 17, of Bryn Mawr, Penn., and Abby, 15, of Mountain Lakes, N.J., shared their food allergy stories with Lifescript. In these interviews, they detail what anaphylaxis feels like, how they handle a severe allergic reaction, and how they manage their allergies from day to day.