Halloween was the best time ever! I had a blast! I’m not gonna lie, with this being the first time I trick-or-treated in about ten years, I was a little bit nervous, but I had an absolute blast! My sister and I went around the entire subdivision, and by the time we were done, our bags were completely stuffed! Meanwhile, my mom stayed at home to pass out candy, but she also had food free options, so she put a teal pumpkin sign up on the door.

Once my sister and I got home, my mom set up a “store,” where she traded my candy for her allergy safe candy. She had a whole bunch of cool candy that I could trade for.

All in all, I’m super glad I did it. I was nervous at first, but it turned out to be a really fun experience. Not to mention all the candy I have now!

Until next time!

Gary

A couple weeks back, I talked about a local event held in the town of Clawson sponsoring peanut free trick-or-treating. Well, I went to the event on Saturday and it was a blast! Thank you to the city of Clawson for holding such a wonderful event, and for keeping the people with allergies in mind when planning it. I ended up bringing home a whole bunch of candy, and my sister and I had a blast! If you happen to live in the area, I would definitely recommend this wonderful event to you, whether or not you have allergies. My parents took some really cool pictures of the event, so I posted some to show.

Happy Halloween everyone! I’m so excited to do my neighborhood trick or treating night in about ten years! I don’t even remember the last time I went trick-or-treating in our subdivision, and I have to say, I’m pretty psyched. I understand that not the candy I get is going to be safe, but my mom has a plan. She’s setting up a sort of “store” in which I can trade my unsafe candy for some safe candy.  Then we’ll take my unsafe candy and donate it. I am excited at the idea, and I will write all about how it went in a later post, so stay tuned!

My mom is using this really cool program called the Halloween Candy Buyback. It’s where you sell your candy to dentists, or other shop owners who are registered with the program. They pay you one dollar for each pound of candy you bring in, and then donate it to military troops overseas by partnering with the Soldiers’ Angels program. How cool is that?

To find a buyback center near you, all you have to do is go to this link…

http://www.halloweencandybuyback.com/

…and insert your zip code into the search tool and it will find people near you who have registered with the program who will buy your candy back. I think it’s a super cool program, not only for allergy kids like me, but also for those soldiers. What a great way to get rid of unsafe candy!

If you know of any other programs like this, feel free to comment. You might be featured in my next post.

Until next time!

Gary

The latest development in the allergy community is the EpiPen pill. Doctors have been trying to create a pill that can transfer epinephrine to patients going through anaphylctic shock. In other words, an pill that can replace an EpiPen.

The pill would supposedly be exponentially cheaper than an EpiPen, and last much longer.

Personally, I am thrilled by the idea. I think it’s inspired. If I don’t have to lug around two EpiPens everywhere, and if my parents don’t have to spend ridiculous sums of money on auto-injectors every year–they are estimating that the epinephrine pills could last up to seven years, then I’m happy.

Doctors have been wanting to make EpiPen pills for a while, however, numerous problems arise from it. First, someone going through anaphylaxis might find it difficult to swallow a pill. Even if they could manage, it takes time for a regular pill to be absorbed by the stomach, and epinephrine can’t survive being processed in the stomach.

To bypass that problem, doctors are looking into making it an ODT, or orally disintegrating tablet. Those are those pills that you hold under your tongue and it dissolves.

I think this is absolutely fascinating, and if you do too, then I have some links on the story if you want to read more.

http://www.zmescience.com/medicine/pill-epi-63142/

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/237922-cheaper-longer-lasting-epinephrine-pills-could-soon-replace-overpriced-epipens

Until next time!

Gary

Hello readers!

Halloween is in twelve more days.  It is one of my favorite holidays.  Even an allergy kid loves candy and treats.  I’m going trick-or-treating for the first time in almost ten years! I’m actually really looking forward to it.  My family and I have sort of avoided traditional trick-or-treating for a while due to my allergy. Instead we have a big Halloween party every year with my whole family at my grandparents’ house.  We also go to trick or treat events, like Trick or Treasure, an allergy free event in a town near us, or my favorite Halloween at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI.

I just went to the Halloween event at Greenfield Village this past weekend. It is such an amazing event.  I usually give away most of the treats, but I took a picture of my little haul below–clearly you aren’t really there for the treats, but I thought you might want to see what they give out.

It is such a fun evening.  As the sun sets, the village is lit up by hundreds of carved pumpkins.  You follow the pumpkin path and are entertained by a a circus sideshow, a fortune teller, giant singing pumpkins, a band of pirates, and amazing actors retelling classic stories in the candlelit night.  My favorite this year was a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart.  Watch out for the Headless Horseman as he rides across the field!  It’s so much fun!

I dressed up as Harry Potter (due to reasons mentioned in an earlier post), and my little sister dressed up as Hermione. The resemblance was actually kind of scary.

Below, I posted some cool pictures from the event from those who are interested.

Feel free to comment about any fun, allergy-safe events in your local area. I might even include it in a future post!

As a part of my blog, I like to read up on current allergy events, because I believe that an important part of learning about allergies is being up to date on the events that occur. I came across this story in the news recently, and I wanted to wirte a post about it, in hopes that something like this never happens again.

About a week ago, a high school student at District 214 high school named Lia Sommers suffered an allergic reaction after eating a turkey sandwich with pesto provided to her by the school.

The Food and Nutrition Services Department had subbed out the pine nuts in the pesto, which Sommers was not allergic to, with peanuts, without alerting the students or staff of the school. According to reports, Sommers felt her throat begin to close right after taking the first bite of her sandwich.

With the help of a friend, Sommers managed to make it to the nurse’s office, where she requested to be injected with an Epipen.

Now here’s where it gets interesting.

The nurse did not give her an EpiPen. She said that instead, Sommers should take Benadryl antihistamine. Sommers, who from experience, knew that Benadryl simply masks symptoms of a reaction while it proceeds to get worse, refused. At this point, Sommers had been going through anaphylaxis for a couple minutes and the nurse still hadn’t even called  911.

When the nurse checked Sommers’s official allergy action plan and found that it said to use EpiPen first, in her allergist’s own writing, even that wasn’t enough. Instead, the nurse proceeded to call the Lia’s mother and ask what she should do even though the child was having an allergic reaction right next to her.

According to an interview with the mother after the event, the first two questions she asked the nurse were: “Did [she] administer EpiPen?” and “Did [she] call 911?” She said she was appalled to hear that the answer to both of those questions was no. Luckily, 911 was later called, and Sommers managed to pull through, but this is yet another example of how education about food allergies is super important.

If 911 got there even a couple minutes later, would Sommers have survived? It is impossible to know, but her chances would be greatly reduced due to the actions of that nurse. While she was simply trying to help to the best of her ability, this just shows that not a lot of people know the proper allergy procedure. I hope we can change that.

Until next time

Gary

Last week was the Emmys, and while I dont usually watch that kind of stuff, I was kind of excited to hear that Jimmy Kimmel would be hosting it. I like Jimmy Kimmel, and I think he’s a funny guy. However, he made a joke at the Emmys that I definitely did not find funny.

During the Emmys, Jimmy Kimmel decided to pass out peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches to everyone in the audience. That’s THOUSANDS of potentially deadly sandwiches.

Whilst passing them out, Kimmel asked the audience which among them had gluten allergies. After those that did raised their hands, Kimmel said that he just wanted people to know which of their favorite celebrities “were the most annoying.” Kimmel has a history of insensitivity towards gluten allergies, calling people with celiac disease “annoying” during his “What is gluten” video.

Kimmel then goes on to say that if anyone had peanut allergies “then I guess this is goodbye, because we could only afford one EpiPen.” While I appreciate a jab at Mylan as much as anyone, this kind of took it too far.

Kimmel’s joke was widely renowned as the highlight of the Emmys, but in my humble opinion, any joke about something as serious as that isn’t funny. What people need to realize is that this stuff kills people. And it isn’t like joking about allergies is a new thing.

Ricky Gervais, who I absolutely love, made a joke about it on the Tonight Show a couple months ago. He was talking with Jimmy Fallon about one of his plane trips, and how there was an announcement about how there would be no nuts served due to a severe allergy on board.

Gervais told Fallon that even though he knew that “they would blow up like a giant frog,” “he never wanted to eat nuts more” because he felt like the person was “infringing on [his] rights.”

http://globalnews.ca/news/2773787/ricky-gervais-goes-on-rant-about-nut-allergies-enrages-parents/

Perhaps none of it is as vile as the words of Louis CK, another comedian. In one of his stand-up routines, he says that if touching a peanut can kill you, “maybe you deserve to die.”

It made me wonder, do people like Kimmel and Gervais, who people watch and look up to, have a responsibility not to joke about those kinds of things? Does it hurt more when a celebrity with a huge audience makes a joke out of allergies?  I think it does.  This is because if they joke about allergies, then everyone else will think it’s okay. Last week when a kid at my lunch table waved a peanut butter sandwich in my face like it was the funniest thing in the world, he didn’t think what he was doing was at all wrong.

The media plays an important role in public opinion. If the media treats allergies as a joke, everyone will think allergies are a joke. Actually, that’s kind of why I started this blog in the first place. I wanted to emphasize the seriousness of food allergies of all kinds. After all it isn’t “just a joke” if someone could be hurt.

Until next time.

Gary

Gosh, it’s been forever since my last post! Sorry for the wait everyone, but with six tests, two presentations, and a foreign language skit, this week was a nightmare. I’m getting super excited for Halloween. I ordered my costume a while ago, and it arrived in the mail recently.

I’m gonna be Harry Potter. I love the books, people say I look just like him, AND my birthday is the same day as Harry Potter’s birthday. Plus, I can say I’m going as Gary Potter. I dress up as him pretty much every other year just because of how perfect it is.

Speaking of Halloween, my last post was about the Teal Pumpkin project, and to continue with the theme, I’m going to talk about a fun local event that goes on in Michigan for kids with allergies.

It’s called Trick or Treasure, and it’s held in a little town called Clawson, Michigan. During Trick or treasure, children with allergies can walk around the town of Clawson in their costumes. If a storefront has a Trick or Treasure sign on it, trick or treaters can walk inside and find someone offering a bowl full of allergy safe treats and toys.

So far, my family and I have gone to the Trick or Treasure event for three years, and this year will be our fourth. Since I can’t always eat the treats on Halloween, this is kind of the next best thing. For people who are interested, the event is on October 29 from noon to three o’ clock this year.

This link leads to the Downtown Clawson website, where they give more details about the event.

http://downtownclawson.com/whatshappening/events/scaventure/

Of course this is a local event, so it’s only in downtown Clawson, Michigan. However, there are many local events that support children with allergies. So to make everyone’s Halloween a little bit sweeter, feel free to comment on this post about fun allergy-safe events in your area. I might include it in my next post!

Until next time!

Gary

Gosh, it seems like the school year is just flying by. I’m about 5 weeks in, and it’s already almost October! That means Halloween is coming up. The holiday is a little bit scary for people with allergies, but I personally love Halloween.   It seems like there are more and more things to accommodate people who have food allergies too, such as the Teal Pumpkin Project and the Switch Witch. In my next few posts, I will be talking about these things, as well as other peanut free things I do for Halloween, to give everyone an idea of how to make their holiday season safe.

The first movement that I would like to talk about is one that gained momentum relatively recently. The Teal Pumpkin Project. The Teal Pumpkin Project was originally an awareness campaign run by the Food Allergy Awareness Community of East Tennessee, but launched as a national campaign by FARE in 2014. Last year, there were Teal Pumpkin houses in all 50 states and a total of 14 different countries, and the movement is still gaining momentum.

Essentially, the Teal Pumpkin Project is a movement to have non-food items as an option to all Trick-or-Treating children with food allergies. By putting a teal pumpkin by your house, you are advertising to children that non-food items are given. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t also give away food items to children without allergies, but it is recommended that it is done safely and separately.

There are many non-food treats that are just perfect to give out to children with food allergies. The FARE website suggests glow sticks, stickers, necklaces, bracelets, bouncy balls, Halloween erasers, etc. Of course you don’t even have to go to the store to get that stuff. Simply by going to FARE’s website, you can order a food free “Halloween Essentials” kit, filled with fun toys to pass out during Halloween.

Another great source for inexpensive non-food treats is The Oriental Trading Company.

It isn’t that hard to do that little bit extra for kids with food allergies. This Halloween, make sure to think of the Teal Pumpkin Project when you are ordering your treats. Then go online and register your home as a Teal Pumpkin house.  You could make a little kid’s day!  I would have been so excited when I was little if the Teal Pumpkin Project had been around.

Here are a few links to help you get started.

This is the link to the Oriental Trading company, which is a great place to get all sorts of fun Halloween toys.

http://www.orientaltrading.com/

For those of you who don’t want to paint a pumpkin teal, here are a bunch of printable flyers, posters, and more advertising your house’s teal pumpkin status.

http://www.foodallergy.org/teal-pumpkin-project/download#.V97yNFsrLrc

Here is the website where you can register as an official Teal Pumpkin house.

http://www.foodallergy.org/teal-pumpkin-project/fever-map#.V9711FsrLrc

Finally, this is the website where you can purchase a Halloween Essentials package, full of safe toys.

http://store.foodallergy.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=TP6EK

Until next time!

Gary