Hello, glad to find this board!

Hi. My son Trevor was diagnosed with PA when he was 13 months old. He took a bite of a pb sandwich, and broke out in hives in about 2 minutes, his eyes swelled and his nose started running. We happened to be visiting my mother, and she told me to give him some Benadryl Allergy (which I happened to have because he seems to have environmental allergies).

I did, and about 20 minutes later, everything was fine. The hives came back a little later that day, and then were gone completely the next day. I didn't know anything about food allergies, I had heard of them, but thought they were very rare! I called his ped, and he had a RAST test done, and sent us to a ped allergist.

His allergist said that his numbers weren't very high, and told us to stay away from peanuts, and also all tree nuts and fish/shellfish and "may contains" until he was tested for them at age 2. He prescribed an epi-pen, but told us that we probably wouldn't ever need to use it.

He had 2 minor reactions in the past year, I don't know from peanuts or not. One was from being kissed on the cheek after someone ate a walnut covered ice cream cone. He broke out in hives on his cheek. The second was from a bisquit at Red Lobster. He ate a little bit of one, and broke out in hives where the crumbs were on his face and ear, but had no other problems.

Three weeks ago, he got into the fridge on his own, and took a bite of a oatmeal cookie, that had a tablespoon of peanut butter in the batch, and had a severe anaphylactic reaction. He broke out in hives, but not nearly as bad as the first time, his lips and tongue and the insides of his mouth swelled badly, his nose started pouring like a flood, and he kept coughing and drooling and holding his throat.

Well, the allergist had told us to give him Benadryl first, and then the epi if he got worse. So I tried giving him the Benadryl, but he could hardly swallow it. I then realized (duh) that he wasn't going to get worse than this, and gave him his epi. After being at the hospital for a few hours, it finally began to sink in that he could have died, and we have never been as careful as we should have been all along. Now our "comfort level" is very tight.

I found this site, and have found so much useful information. Trevor now has a medic-alert bracelet, and we are much more careful, and have made our house completely peanut free. Hopefully he will never have another reaction, but if he does we will know exactly what to do right away. I wish that I would have known about all of this when he was first diagnosed as PA. We don't have a computer, but I have access to one every week, so I will continue to gain so much usefeul information from these boards. Thank you!

Trevor has never had tree nuts or fish, and is being tested for those in August. We also have a 5 month old, who we're hoping doesn't have allergies!

Tina