Look up tree nut and you’ll find that walnut, pecan, almond, hazelnut and quite a few others fall into the classification. We’ve been playing the avoidance game for almost two years with these nuts … until last night.
Boy do I feel bad.
I bought cookies from Panera. Abby was the first to completely finish dinner and she wanted one of the chocolate ones. I though they were chocolate with white chocolate chips — not chocolate with WALNUTS — as the case was.
So she’s munching happily along when she starts complaining that her lip hurts. We asked her if she bit it and she shook her head no — repeatedly. That’s when Ron noticed the large bump forming. So we asked again if she bit it. No. Then, she rubs her eye and it looks a bit swollen.
“What’s in the cookie?” He asks me. I swear I thought it was just chocolate, but then in reading the ingredients we find the culprit.
I was about the call the Doctor when I remembered we have Benadryll — for just this reason. Popped it open and gave her a dose … swelling went away quickly — as did she within about an hour.
Around one or two am though, she came into our room and curled up next to me saying her tummy hurt. Call it mothers intuition, but I knew something was up. She was coughing and coughing, getting water and saying her tummy hurt.
I was literally crossing my fingers that it was just the breeze from the fan. I even let her have some cough medicine as it sounded like a dry cough.
No sooner was the cough medicine in that it was out again, along with her water, dinner, snack, lunch and that walnut filled cookie.
After ten minutes or so of cleanup — in numerous places — she sat on a stool at the toilet and announced she felt much much better, went back to bed — on the floor in our room — and slept like the dead the rest of the night.
I wish I could have.
I lose major Mom of the Year points for this one. 🙁
The only side benefit is that we most definitely know she is allergic to those nuts now and we’ll avoid them like the plague — or she will. 🙂