<p>^^^^^I knew a nurse who used to say "anyone with more than 5 drug allergies is “cuh-razy.”</p>
<p>I valued my patients’ lives as well as my nursing license and very carefully recorded each and ever drug allergy verbalized by my patients and made sure it ended up on that red bracelet every patient wears. It’s true that not every “allergy” is actually an allergy, but is instead an intolerance. But unless the drug is absolutely necessary for some reason, an intolerance should for all practical purposes be treated the same as an allergy.</p>
<p>In some cases, a drug is deemed necessary even though the patient might be allergic. In those cases, large doses of steroids and antihistamines are given prior to administration of the offending substance. Of course, respiratory support is standing by. Examples might be dye used during angioplasties when the patient is experiencing chest pain and abnormal EKG suggesting impending heart attack.</p>
<p>nrdsb4 - I agree regarding the drugs. I am truly allergic to one antibiotic, and when asked if I have any allergies to drugs, I only report this one. However, I have had some pretty nasty reactions (gastrointestinal) to other antibiotics… so bad that the doctors have taken me off them and put me on another one. </p>
<p>So I’ve always wondered. If I got a bad infection, and one of these antibiotics that I’ve reacted to badly was the most effective drug, if they give it to you in an injection, would it alleviate the gastrointestinal effects?</p>
<p>cross posted with you… I also worry about steroids as I had a nasty reaction to them last time I was on them, too.</p>
<p>I have an “allergy” to penicillin. I took penicillin once many years ago and had a terrible reaction - I was one big hive, I couldn’t breathe, everything was swollen and itchy. Now, we think the reaction was actually an overdose (we realized that because I am overweight, the doctor may have given me a dose correct for my weight but inappropriate for my age - a sticky situation), not an allergy. But I certainly don’t want to try again to find out. I don’t think that’s a crime, so I just mark penicillin allergy.</p>
<p>^^^ditto here on the penicillin allergy. And your reaction certainly has all the earmarks of an allergy. Also, overexposure to a substance can result in an allergy as well.</p>
<p>You could do a challenge where they give you the drug and have intubation equipment standing by, but really, why? There are usually alternative antibiotics to penicillin-they might be more expensive, or you might need to use more than one. But allergies which present as hives and respiratory problems are potentially very dangerous, and I don’t see the need to push it unless it would be your only avenue for recovery.</p>
<p>I work in a School Food Service Office. We deal with food allergies on a daily basis, and we take them seriously. </p>
<p>If I had a child with legitimate food allergies I would prepare their lunch at home. You wouldn’t believe the phone calls we get from parents wanting to know every ingredient in our meals so they can figure out if their food-allergy kid can eat it. The problem is, we can give you the ingredients from a particular brand of food - but there’s no guarantee that next week we’ll have the same brand. We have brands we usually buy, but if something else is on sale or our usual item is backordered, the vendor will substitute another brand. And one brand may contain your allergin, where another one doesn’t. I don’t know today what brand of meatballs we’re using next Tuesday. If your kid has a serious allergy, just don’t risk it.</p>
<p>The only ingredient we really consistently avoid is peanut & tree nut. We will not knowingly buy anything containing peanuts, peanut butter or peanut oil EXCEPT for actual peanut butter itself. We make the PB&J sandwiches separately from the other sandwiches, using utensils that are only used for PB. </p>
<p>We get a lot of kids, especially in middle school, claiming to be lactose intolerant so they can get water instead of milk with lunch. We smile and tell them that as soon as they bring in a doctor’s note that they are lactose intolerant, we’ll be happy to mark their account so that they can get water instead of milk. You should see their faces fall, since 95% of them are not intolerant of lactose or anything else. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Starbright–in Seattle everyone thinks they have food allergies. It’s a very sensitive city.</p>
<p>Maybe in the " Seattle" that is the planned community you live in, but the only people I know of with allergies are Mike McCready- who doesn’t have allergies- but he has Crohn’s and IBS issues- ( + others who have similar concerns), some children who have severe peanut allergies and some people who have trouble with dairy, ( mostly those who are from countries that do not pasteurize milk) - I was not able to tolerate cow milk as an infant ( I was a premie and was not breast fed), and I still have difficulty digesting it.
[Sixty</a> percent of adults can’t digest milk - USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-08-30-lactose-intolerance_N.htm]Sixty”>http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-08-30-lactose-intolerance_N.htm)</p>
<p>I think that our livers cannot process so many chemicals and hormones that are in the air/water/food, and we develop illness and " sensitivities" in response to that.
The liver can only take so much.</p>
<p>The hothouse flower effect, doesn’t explain why my grandmother and grandfather died at 85 & 86 years of age- but their only child- who worked in the office of a Boeing plant and was exposed to airborne chemicals that she blamed for her severe asthma died @ 75 a few months ago.</p>
<p>Wow, OP. Watch a 7-year-old child nearly die from eating 1 chip with peanut oil as an unknown ingredient. Watch the doctor come out trembling because she didn’t think she would get his airway open in time. Watch people dismiss the parent as overprotective and attention seeking when she is firm about what he can eat or not eat. Watch his mouth and lips become covered in hives because he played with a hamster who had come in contact with tree nuts. Watch a parent worry every day, because, this really can be life and death. Then you might have empathy. Who cares if there really are people who imagine these allergies or even make them up to somehow get attention for themselves? How are they in any way hurting you? Why do you care so much?</p>
<p>And, interestingly, my mom is 80, just had surgery, and has developed an allergy to latex which she never had before.</p>
<p>I remember not long after H and I got married… he went to a friend’s house to play poker and came home early, face all red and eyes very, very puffy and itchy. He was also wheezing. The guy had a cat, so at that point we realized that he was very allergic to cats. His parents got a cat after we got married, and whenever we’d come to town (which wasn’t very often), hit mother would always doubt us when we declined to stay at their house, and insisted he was not allergic. Um… I saw his allergic reaction first hand.</p>
<p>Several years later, before D2 had developed a cat allergy, D1, D2 and I were at our hair stylist’s house for cuts (she was working out of her house for a while). While D1 and I were getting our cuts, D2 ‘kind of’ played with one of our hair stylist’s cats… as much as the cat would let her come near (not much). Later that night when we were all home and D2 had been sitting in H’s lap while watching TV, all of a sudden, he began to get wheezy and his eyes started to get itchy, red, and swollen. We finally figured out that the little bit of cat dander that D2 got on her clothes had affected H when she sat on his lap. That’s how careful we have to be. I’m the only one in the family that does not have severe reactions like this to cats. H and D2 also are allergic to penicillin. D2 has is also allergic to sulfas and cephalosporins. One time when treating her for a very bad case of bronchitis, she was on a sulfa and steroids. Two days after she finished the steroids, she broke out in hives all over her body and got wheezy again. She looked horribly sunburned. We figured out she was allergic to the sulfas, but while she’d been on the steroids, she’d been protected. Unfortunately, this all happened right when I was graduating with my M.A., so all the pictures we have, she’s covered from neck to toes with clothing (turtleneck, skirt, tights and shoes) so that you can’t see her hives. She also plastered on a ton of makeup on her face and wore big sunglasses. She was not happy about having to go out like that. But maybe she felt special (NOT) anyway.</p>
<p>The difference between a sensitivity and an allergy is all very confusing to me. Is it just a matter of degree? I was told by my Primary that I’m one of those people (apparently, it’s fairly common among African Americans) who cannot take Ace Inhibitors. After a single dose, my lower lip swelled up as if I’d been decked by a prize fighter. But my tongue didn’t swell, and neither did my throat close up. Does that mean I’m merely “sensitive”, or is it likely that continued use of the medication would have resulted in a more severe reaction?</p>
<p>Likewise with my D, at 2 and a half, developed an ugly head to toe rash after taking the antibiotic, Ceclor. Sensitivity or allergy?
</p>
<p>As a high school freshman, D began to experience widespread outbreaks of hives, which over several months’ time, became a daily occurrence. Simultaneously, she began to have trouble breathing when exercising. At the time, her pediatrician declared the hives “ideopathic”. But later, when she was applying for the US Air Force Academy, she had to submit a medical explanation for the hives, as well as what “trouble breathing” meant. The Asthma and Allergy Specialist we consequently took her to performed skin tests, and pulmonary tests, and concluded that a severe allergy to dust mites, was responsible for both the daily hives outbreaks and exercise-induced bronchial spasm. So long, Air Force Academy dream… Now, at twenty-three, she still must take Zyrtec daily, lest she break out in welts from head to toe. I can assure you, she’d rather not feel that “special”.</p>
<p>When my son was about a year old, we began to notice that he would take a bite of food, and suddenly his eyes would bulge in sheer panic and he would cry as he wiped at his tongue with his hand in an effort to get the offending food out of his mouth. He was too young to put into words why he was reacting in such an extreme way to what we viewed as a “mere dislike” for whatever he was eating at the time. Once, when he was three and a half, he asked to have what everyone was having for desert at a religious retreat were attending (brownies). He took one bite and wailed as if he’d been stung by a bee and began furiously wiping at his tongue. Between wails, he cried, “It’s got nuts in it!” And I thought, “So what’s so bad about nuts? It can’t taste so bad as to warrant all that drama!” It didn’t occur to either his father or me that he was having an allergic reaction to them. I’d never (believe it or not) so much as heard of people being allergic to nuts. Nobody in either of our families had ever been allergic to nuts. It wasn’t until years later, when he was better able to express exactly how the nuts were effecting him, that we found out he was allergic to them, and that it got worse every time he ate them. Soon, he couldn’t so much as touch nuts with his hands. A few years ago, he was camping with the boy scouts (his Dad was with him at the time), when during a lull in the activities, he and a few others came upon a Hickory Nut tree. They began horsing around, using rocks to break open the outer husks that covered the shells, and chucking them at one another. In a matter of a few minutes, S’s face swelled up so that his eyes were mere slits in his head and he began itching all over. His Dad brought him home and plied him with Benedryl. Heretofore, we had assumed that as long as he didn’t actually eat the nuts, he wouldn’t have a problem with them. But this episode showed us that the allergy was increasing in severity. His doctor subsequently prescribed the epi pen. Now, if S so much as smells tree nuts on the breath of another person, he begins to break out in a rash, his tongue and throat begin to itch, and it feels like his airway is closing up. I’m willing to guess that this isn’t an “imagined” allergy. Strangely enough, however, he’s never had a problem with peanuts. From what I understand, those allergies often overlap. If you’re allergic to one, you’re likely to be allergic to the other as well. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that he doesn’t suddenly have a peanut allergy.:)</p>
<p>"The trouble is, the people who say they have an allergy when they don’t have one end up making it worse for people with real, life-threatening allergies. My husband is allergic to milk. Not lactose intolerant, but really, go-to-the-emergency-room-because-throat-is-closing-up allergic. People who say they are allergic to milk, but who then go ahead and eat a slice of pizza, give the impression that a milk allergy is no big deal. Then waiters or hosts, deceived by the allergy liars, won’t warn my husband if some food has a little milk, cheese or yogurt in it, and he’ll get sick. "</p>
<p>I don’t know if this is a fair assessment of the situation, because as I understand it not all allergies are that severe. I have a severe go-to-the-emergency-room allergy of processed fruit (which is an airborne allergy and just lovely all around), but I am also allergic to cheese-- which gives me migraines and bad rashes, and I eat it anyway in vast quantities because it is delicious and worth being headachey and itchy. My nephew gets hives if he drinks straight milk but he can have a small slice of pizza without having a reaction-- though if he ate four slices then he’d get a rash. Our allergists told us these were allergies, so I’m not sure I understand.</p>
[quote]
Light exposure to many nasty things when young tend to immunize when older.<a href=“1”>/quote</a> I grew up with a series of cats. I loved them dearly. They were everywhere in our house, slept with me, etc. One day when I was about 20, my sweet cat curled up next to me while I was watching TV (I’ll never forget the moment), and I started to itch. It was all downhill after that. (2) The first and only time I took Bactrim, I broke out in hives all over my body. When the hives moved into my mouth and down my throat, I went to the ER. I guess that’s just a side-effect. (3) I guess you’re saying that if my S had had a steady diet of shellfish, he wouldn’t have to carry an epi pen today? Gee, I was such an overprotective parent not to serve shrimp and lobster regularly. </p>
<p>My H is a chemist and an expert on pesticides, indoor air issues, and other things relevant to this thread, so I hear a lot about this stuff. It’s impossible to be a “hothouse flower” in today’s environment. I’m signing off, mostly because I’m leaving town now for the weekend, but also because the “it’s all in your head” tone of the original post really gets me.</p>
<p>my son has several food allergies. none of his allergies can be taken lightly. he is allergic to milk, beef, eggs and most shellfish. he can’t touch these foods without breaking out in hives. if he eats these foods, just imagine the hives in his throat–which closes fairly quickly and can be fatal.</p>
<p>once my son bought a bag of the lime tostitos–he ate one and felt his mouth “tingle” and he stopped and read the label–sure enough–non-fat powdered milk was an ingredient.</p>
<p>it is indeed frustrating when people say they have a milk allergy and that if they have milk they don’t feel well. that’s just not the same!</p>
<p>“Around 80% are just imagined. Everyone needs to feel so special”</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s the naysayers who need to feel special!</p>
<p>My D has some serious, potential for anaphylaxis, food allergies, and also some “oral/crossover allergies”. DH was quite a disbeliever about the crossover allergies until he had a chat with our allergist. Apparently, they can start if you are allergic to pollen, and your body confuses the protein in the raw fruit or vegetable for the tree pollen you are allergic to. If the fruit or veggie is cooked, there is usually not a reaction as the protein has changed.</p>
<p>For D, it started with carrots (organic carrots BTW) and branched out to include all pome fruits, stone fruits, grapes, berries and melons, and finally citrus fruits. She can tolerate raw grapefruit only if she’s taken a zyrtec for that day. Tree nuts and/or shellfish could kill her, but the allergist was clear in telling us that the oral allergy COULD AT ANY TIME lead to anaphylaxis. Not as likely, but you don’t gamble with this no matter how much you love apples!</p>
<p>People get confused about why D can drink commercial juices with no problem. It’s easy, commercial juice has been Pasteurized (that is, heated to 160 degrees F) and that has changed the proteins to make them acceptable to her body. Fresh squeezed juice is out for her, but it may be different for other people.</p>
<p>I think that IGNORANCE is the real problem, not “imagined” allergies. Yes, people today are getting “weaker” by having more allergies and a greater incidence of asthma. There are many good theories out there as to why this is happening but “pretending” is not one of them.</p>
Now, at twenty-three, she still must take Zyrtec daily, lest she break out in welts from head to toe. I can assure you, she’d rather not feel that “special”.</p>