Success at the Happiest Place on Earth

Well, for us it really was the happiest place, because the staff was fabulous about handling food allergies. All of Sophie's allergies are within the "top 8," and I think that made it easier on the staff. They were amazing. One place we ate at was a buffet and I asked about some buffet items. They told me what would work for her and then brought her plate out already made up so that I wouldn't need to worry about whether there was any cross-contamination with the serving utensils! The Chef came out to talk to me right away at every restaurant except one; at that one it was the manager instead. I am very impressed, to say the least.

As a side note, I had an interesting allergy experience at Disneyland. One of my other children ended up in the First Aid center because of a migraine headache, and I stayed with her while she was resting. While we were there, another mom and daughter came in. The little girl was having stomach problems--cramping, etc. She was able to get comfortable and fall asleep for a few minutes at one point, during which her mother and I started talking. It turned out that the little girl had food allergies. A little while later, the girl went to the bathroom. It was clear that her stomach problems were becoming more intense. When she finally came out, probably 15 or 20 minutes later, she was also sneezing repeatedly. This was a new symptom and struck me as being a little odd, until I thought of Sophie's recent peanut challenge.

During her peanut challenge a few months ago, Sophie ingested some peanut butter without problems, but eventually threw up and then sneezed repeatedly for several minutes. This was followed by more vomiting. At the time, I was very worried because whenever 2 body systems are reacting, you have to consider the possibility of anaphylaxis.

Well, the little girl's mom was worried about getting her daughter back to the hotel because she wasn't improving and needed better rest, and didn't really notice that her daughter had started sneezing. I mentioned that she might want to give her a Benadryl and have the RN take her blood pressure, just to check, and within a few minutes she ended up being rushed off with the paramedics to the emergency room. As far as I could see, she was not in any terrible danger at that time, but there were 2 body systems reacting--and you just never know where that's going to go.

Hopefully everything went well from that point--I haven't heard anything further. As I've considered the evening, it has struck me how interesting it is that I happened to be there with another allergy mom. If nothing else, we were able to give each other a little support in an unfamiliar environment. Right place, right time!