A couple weeks ago I made a post about FARE, the largest nonprofit organization for life threatening food allergies. I highly recommend that site, as it is helpful for people facing allergies and their families, as well as people who want to learn more about food allergies. Well, I was recently on the FARE website when I discovered this really helpful tool for people going back to school. It’s called FARE’s Back to School Headquarters. It has a bunch of resources for students, parents, and school faculty.

From awareness posters, to emergency care plans, this website has everything that anyone could need.

This is an example of the emergency care plan from the FARE website. Before we discovered this, my father would spend HOURS making one from scratch. It’s super convenient to have a resource like this.

In addition, they also have instructional materials for teachers who have students with allergies, anti allergy bullying materials, webinars and instructional videos, letters to send to school administrators, 504 plans, and more. It’s crazy how convenient it is to have so many things for back to school all in one place. I’ll post the link below.

http://www.foodallergy.org/back-to-school-headquarters

That’s it for today’s post. I hope you find the website convenient, I sure did!

Until next time!

Gary

Recently, I asked you, my readers to take a short survey for me, and the response was great! Thank you! I ended up getting one hundred and twenty five responses. To all of you who answered, thank you so much! It will really help me to have some good primary sources for my project.

As you might already know, I took two surveys. One from you my readers, and one from the students, teachers, and parents at my school. People who aren’t as exposed to the allergy situation as my readers probably are.

Without going into too much detail, I can definitely say that the difference in responses between the two surveys are enormous. Not only do the people from a school environment know less about food allergies, but a very large amount of them wouldn’t give up nuts to make a safer environment for a child with an allergy. My hypothesis going into this project was that knowledge of allergies directly corresponds to empathy, and that truly seems to be the case.

I would further describe the trends, but I feel the best way would be just to show you the results of both surveys.

The last question was a written response question, and since I can’t put all the responses here, I will provide a sample of three answers from each. Remember, the answers are completely anonymous. Even I don’t know who wrote them.

Question: If you were told to sacrifice eating anything with peanuts/treenuts in it in order to create a safer environment for a child with a nut allergy, would you? Please elaborate.

Here are five random responses from the general populous.

1. No. I really don’t care about their allergies and they should sit at their own table.

2. No, but I would make sure to clean up in order to not cause cross-contamination.

3. Yes I would in order to ensure the safety and well-being of the other person.

4. No, I wouldn’t because I believe that our society has handled the peanut allergy problem and that it doesn’t pose a big threat anymore. I believe it’s safe to consume peanut products around those with allergies as long as those allergies aren’t airborne. Those with allergies and their parents know to take precautions. I believe time would be better spent on other issues.

5. Depending on to what extent I would. But I wouldn’t if I was in a public place, mainly because at that point it is the parent or guardian’s responsibility to make sure that the child isn’t touching everything.

Here are five random responses from my blog readers

1. I wouldn’t think twice about it. I would do it instantly.

2. Yes. Having a child with these food allergies, and knowing how serious it is, makes me willing to make such a sacrifice

3. Of course, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for hurting a child because of something that I ate

4. No I don’t think this is the right way to build a safe environment for a child. The child needs to be taught what he/she can and cannot eat. By taking nuts out of a situation entirely, I believe kids can become lazy by default and not be vigilant about their food intake. It gives a false sense of security that they can eat anything and it’ll be safe. That said, I think banning it in pre-schools is a good idea since kids are too young to make that choice. Beyond pre-school seems to be a great learning opportunity for the child and their parents.

5. Yes. I wouldn’t hesitate to help create a safer environment for someone with allergies … food or other types.

The difference between each group’s responses was quite drastic. This has really opened my eyes, and I hope it opens everyone else’s eyes as well. There is a deeply rooted correlation between education and empathy when it comes to food allergies, and these survey responses motivate me even more to spread knowledge about allergies to all who will listen. I hope you, my readers, do the same.

Until next time!

Gary

I’ve always wanted to be a doctor so that I can help people. I’m not sure what specialty I want to go into yet, but I know that I want to be some kind of doctor. With that said, it’s things like this that give me goosebumps and make me want to study medicine even more.

According to CBS-8 in a recent report, a man named Conrad Soriano, 28, was a patient in Sharp Memorial Hospital for his allergic reaction to peanuts after eating at a restaurant. According to the doctors that operated on him, Dr. Shaw and Dr. Eads, his lungs were so inflamed that he could hardly breathe. They said he probably wouldn’t have made it another twenty minutes.

In a last ditch effort to save the man’s life, the doctors performed on operation in the emergency room that was typically done in operating rooms for cardiac surgery patients.

The doctors placed a large catheter in his neck, and then used an ECMO machine to filter the dying man’s blood and bypass it around his lungs, and it worked! It was such an unprecedented surgery, that someone actually recorded the whole thing on their iPhone

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Now Conrad is up and running, and you would never even guess that he was so close to death only a week ago.Doctors at the hospital are going to teach doctors flying in from around the world their procedure in a month’s time.

If you want to read the article and watch the video yourself, here is the link.  Check it out.  It is seriously awesome.

http://www.cbs8.com/story/32836146/lifesaving-idea-never-tried-it-before-and-it-worked

It’s stuff like this that gives me amazing hope for the future, both as a person with life threatening allergies and as a future doctor that could someday make such a difference in someone’s life.  Goosebumps.

Until next time!

Gary

EpiPens are literally my lifeline, as well as the lifeline of everyone else with an allergy. Without them, so many people would die from fatal allergic reactions. I revere my EpiPens with a great love. I don’t go anywhere without them. Bottom line is, EpiPens are really important.

They’re also really expensive!  Whenever my family buys a two pack of EpiPens from CVS, it costs about 600 dollars and since we need 3 packs it runs almost $1800. That’s a lot of money! I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s totally worth it. My mom says she shells out the money without question if it means keeping me safe. I wouldn’t even question it myself, if the epinephrine inside of them was a super expensive miracle liquid that Mylan spent a couple hundred dollars on for each EpiPen.

However, that just isn’t the case at all! According to Bloomberg, each EpiPen costs  about a dollar for Mylan to produce! Now that allergies are getting more and more common and EpiPens are getting more and more needed by the second, it seems like Mylan can charge whatever they want for their life saving medicine. EpiPens used to be sold for about 100 dollars when they were being made in 2007. The sheer increase in price is just jaw-dropping.

Its just hard, because a lot  of people don’t know what to do. When your back to school EpiPen script costs more than your parents’ mortgage payment, do you keep paying? My parents do.  They put money aside all summer knowing it was coming. Some people literally can’t though. They just don’t have the money to pay the ridiculous prices. Then they have to worry about their loved  ones dying of an anaphylactic reaction, and there is nothing they can do.

This issue has gotten a lot of response from the media, with a lot of important political figures chiming in with their opinions.

Hillary Clinton recently weighed in, according to the New York Post, saying that its “the latest example of a company taking advantage of its consumers.” I would have to agree. She went on to talk about how she doesn’t support the price hike and called for Mylan to lower the prices immediately.

Mylan responded, but not how some might have wanted. Instead of lowering the price, they made coupons. According to the Washington Post, the coupons, which provide about 300 dollars savings for a 600 dollar EpiPen two pack, are designed less to help existing customers and more to bring in new customers in the long run.

They also seem to be more of a Band-Aid solution to a problem that requires surgery. With the coupons expiring at the end of December, my guess is that Mylan is just doing this to avoid controversy during the presidential election season and reduce the risk of a legislated permanent price reduction, with discounts slowly reduced after the coupons expire in December.

Meanwhile, Heather Bresch, senator’s daughter and Mylan CEO, is living a pretty cushy life with her 19 million dollar salary made off of the hard earned savings of many struggling middle and lower class families.

I just don’t know what the solution is. On the one hand, Mylan has been charging millions of dollars for medicine that costs a dollar per injection. On the other hand, what other choice does everyone have? With a patent on their auto-injector design for years to come, an alternative to EpiPen would leave people having to inject themselves with a syringe, which is kind of hard to do when you’re having an anaphylactic reaction.

Before I close just to lighten the mood, I can’t resist adding a couple of the better political cartoons I found this week.

That’s it for today’s post. I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while. My homework load has been a little heavy lately. But don’t worry, I am still very dedicated to this blog. Stay tuned for more posts in the very near future!

Until next time!

Gary