I'm entrenched in a ridiculous drama in which GoogleVoice has abducted my cell phone number and refuses to give it back. It terrorizes me, Peanuts. It's a mean, scurvy pirate. One of the ways it messes with me is by randomly transcribing voicemails and sending them to me as a text that would take all of the Pentagon's cryptologysts to decipher.
I was picking up Missy from school one day, when one of these encoded nonsensical messages came in. I wasn't yet familiar with this phenomenon, and so for a minute I just stared at it dumbly, wondering which one of us was crazy. It made no sense, guys, none.
But I could pick out three words:
school
daughter
allergy
Which were the only ones I needed to see to turn my stomach inside out. I smiled at Miss, who I had been unsuccessfully beguiling away from the sandbox, walked over to Her calmly, picked Her up, and sat Her on Mister's lap in His stroller. I measured my words out like sugar in a teaspoon, "There is an emergency, so we are leaving right. now. Hang on love!"
And I hauled our three tushies down the path, up the road, past the park and through the parking lot in record time, dialing the school as we trucked it.
She was ok. She was looking scared and embarrassed, but She was breathing normally. Other than some hives on Her face, She looked fine. Except for the eye.
Her left eye looked as if She'd jammed a ping-pong ball under Her lids. It was big and puffy, swollen and red.
The school features pancakes for lunch (got to start those healthy habits early). One of Little One's friends was eating pancakes with her hands, and reached across the table to get Little One's attention. She touched Her face. That's it. That's all. That's all it took to blimp up Her eye like that and freckle Her with hives. The nurse had washed it out and put ice on it, but it was still swelling.
I was relieved. It could have been so much worse than a swollen eye. I was just getting my heart to start beating normally again, when She took off the ice pack to let me look. The white of Her eye was bulging. The whole eyeball was swollen and eerily fat, and a lima-bean sized pouch was extruding from the white sclera and swelling up and over the iris, covering the color of Her eye.
Eyes, Peanuts. Heebiejeebie. Eye stuff is ick. It was the one part of EMT school I cringed in.
So because I was worried about the eye, and because it was only getting worse, we left kindergarten and spent a long afternoon in the ER. Little One got some medicine and a cold compress, and after a couple of days was just fine; good as new.
But the scariest part of the story, to me, wasn't physical at all. It was that when Her eye had started bothering Her, She covered it with one hand, and kept writing. When Her teacher asked if She was ok, She lied and said yes. She excused Herself to the bathroom.
She didn't come back for a long time, and so the teacher checked and found Her hiding in the bathroom, embarrassed by Her freakish look, rinsing Her eye in the sink.
Her teacher had FREAKED OUT. The nurse said she was hysterical. When she spoke to me, she was angry at Little One for the lie.
I didn't talk to Her about this until we were home, I knew She was ok, and we'd all had a chance to rest and decompress. Then I filled J in, and we talked to Her together. We told Her the truth.
"Little One. It's lucky it was just a pancake and a swollen eye. Because you need to know that if it had been maybe a nut, and you had gone off and hid like that...you could have died in the bathroom. You could have stopped breathing and no one would be there to help you. You HAVE to tell your teacher. It is the most important thing."
The silver lining is that when these things happen I don't get brushed off as the over-dramatic mom as much. Now that Her teacher has seen Little One get a freaky fat eye from one roundhouse-kick by a pancake molecule, She is much more interested in asking me to read labels for snacks and keeping Little One away from spills. Between our chat and missing a birthday party to spend hours in an ER waiting room, I'm hoping Little One has learned something, too.
The struggle between caution and level-headed moderation is a line as thin as the blade on a double-edged sword. On one hand, we don't want Her to be paranoid so that She is living under a constant shadow of fear. We want Her to go out into the big world, have adventures, live. We don't want Her to be sheltered in a bubble of parental protection to the point that She doesn't learn how to navigate the reality on Her own (after all, the great majority of deaths from allergic reactions occur in teens and young adults- basically as soon as children outgrow their parent's reach). And we don't want to ignore how real the social pains of food allergy can be at Her age; isolating Her and pointing out Her difference and making Her friends uncomfortable being around Her.
On the other hand. There is this story of a seven year old who died at school when a friend gave her a peanut on the playground. And this one, where a girl died in her school cafeteria. Or this boy, who had two cardiac arrests, despite being given his epipen, when teacher forgot and gave him a hazelnut candy in one of those dreaded birthday crap-eating fests that happen in Little One's class every other week. This one, who nearly died after building a gingerbread house in school.
And many others.
Because talking about food allergy sometimes seems to get across about as well as that text message I got from the nurse. People are so attached to and in love with food. It's like hearing that your best friend goes around and axe-murders people at night- "cookies? really? cookies are harmless! My cookies could never hurt anyone! It's just a cookie." People seem to almost take offense. When I was discussing Her food allergies with Her teacher at the beginning of the year, the teacher seemed a little annoyed- "obviously, I want to keep Her safe." Yes. No one is saying you are going to tie Her up and force peanuts down Her throat. No one is calling you a sadist.
But something that is inherently nice, nourishing, even comforting to you, is- believe it! It's true!- deadly poison for some of us. It is that big a deal to hand out a treat that "looks ok" without reading the label. Or to expect that a little child not only have the 100% infallible judgement to stay away from allergens "because they are old enough to know better", but also to expect them to have superhuman psychic powers and know what ingredients were used in every processed cracker or home-baked treat brought into school, or that someone spilled milk on their chair yesterday and it wasn't washed with soap and water. Or that the girl eating pancakes across the table is about to reach out.
A kindergarten teacher tasked with a bunch of crazy mini-people who have various special needs, language abilities, and behavior problems can easily view a food allergy as just one more kid issue to add to a long list.
Especially when my child does know better, is personally responsible beyond Her years, and classroom days go by smoothly without incidents. It starts to feel like, hey. What's the big deal? She must not be that sensitive, because every time we've bent the rules and let kids with peanuts/eggs/milk sit next to Her at the table so far, it's been fine.
Until it isn't.
It may seem harsh to tell a five-year-old that She could have died on a bathroom floor. Or to tell it to Her teacher. But it's true.
It's a strange world, as a parent, when you spend a whole afternoon in the ER, when your child gets a big swollen eye, and you feel thankful. But I'm dance-a-jig, shout-to-the-stars, prayers-of-thanks grateful for that ugly swollen eye.
Because even though She had a couple of really bad days- She's still here.
As for the nurse and the teacher, of all the info I've showered them with since before school even started, this episode I think had the effect on them that those three intelligible key words in the transcribed text had on me. It was just a swollen eye. But, I hope, it was enough for them to get the message.
I was picking up Missy from school one day, when one of these encoded nonsensical messages came in. I wasn't yet familiar with this phenomenon, and so for a minute I just stared at it dumbly, wondering which one of us was crazy. It made no sense, guys, none.
But I could pick out three words:
school
daughter
allergy
Which were the only ones I needed to see to turn my stomach inside out. I smiled at Miss, who I had been unsuccessfully beguiling away from the sandbox, walked over to Her calmly, picked Her up, and sat Her on Mister's lap in His stroller. I measured my words out like sugar in a teaspoon, "There is an emergency, so we are leaving right. now. Hang on love!"
And I hauled our three tushies down the path, up the road, past the park and through the parking lot in record time, dialing the school as we trucked it.
She was ok. She was looking scared and embarrassed, but She was breathing normally. Other than some hives on Her face, She looked fine. Except for the eye.
Her left eye looked as if She'd jammed a ping-pong ball under Her lids. It was big and puffy, swollen and red.
The school features pancakes for lunch (got to start those healthy habits early). One of Little One's friends was eating pancakes with her hands, and reached across the table to get Little One's attention. She touched Her face. That's it. That's all. That's all it took to blimp up Her eye like that and freckle Her with hives. The nurse had washed it out and put ice on it, but it was still swelling.
I was relieved. It could have been so much worse than a swollen eye. I was just getting my heart to start beating normally again, when She took off the ice pack to let me look. The white of Her eye was bulging. The whole eyeball was swollen and eerily fat, and a lima-bean sized pouch was extruding from the white sclera and swelling up and over the iris, covering the color of Her eye.
Eyes, Peanuts. Heebiejeebie. Eye stuff is ick. It was the one part of EMT school I cringed in.
So because I was worried about the eye, and because it was only getting worse, we left kindergarten and spent a long afternoon in the ER. Little One got some medicine and a cold compress, and after a couple of days was just fine; good as new.
But the scariest part of the story, to me, wasn't physical at all. It was that when Her eye had started bothering Her, She covered it with one hand, and kept writing. When Her teacher asked if She was ok, She lied and said yes. She excused Herself to the bathroom.
She didn't come back for a long time, and so the teacher checked and found Her hiding in the bathroom, embarrassed by Her freakish look, rinsing Her eye in the sink.
Her teacher had FREAKED OUT. The nurse said she was hysterical. When she spoke to me, she was angry at Little One for the lie.
I didn't talk to Her about this until we were home, I knew She was ok, and we'd all had a chance to rest and decompress. Then I filled J in, and we talked to Her together. We told Her the truth.
"Little One. It's lucky it was just a pancake and a swollen eye. Because you need to know that if it had been maybe a nut, and you had gone off and hid like that...you could have died in the bathroom. You could have stopped breathing and no one would be there to help you. You HAVE to tell your teacher. It is the most important thing."
The silver lining is that when these things happen I don't get brushed off as the over-dramatic mom as much. Now that Her teacher has seen Little One get a freaky fat eye from one roundhouse-kick by a pancake molecule, She is much more interested in asking me to read labels for snacks and keeping Little One away from spills. Between our chat and missing a birthday party to spend hours in an ER waiting room, I'm hoping Little One has learned something, too.
The struggle between caution and level-headed moderation is a line as thin as the blade on a double-edged sword. On one hand, we don't want Her to be paranoid so that She is living under a constant shadow of fear. We want Her to go out into the big world, have adventures, live. We don't want Her to be sheltered in a bubble of parental protection to the point that She doesn't learn how to navigate the reality on Her own (after all, the great majority of deaths from allergic reactions occur in teens and young adults- basically as soon as children outgrow their parent's reach). And we don't want to ignore how real the social pains of food allergy can be at Her age; isolating Her and pointing out Her difference and making Her friends uncomfortable being around Her.
On the other hand. There is this story of a seven year old who died at school when a friend gave her a peanut on the playground. And this one, where a girl died in her school cafeteria. Or this boy, who had two cardiac arrests, despite being given his epipen, when teacher forgot and gave him a hazelnut candy in one of those dreaded birthday crap-eating fests that happen in Little One's class every other week. This one, who nearly died after building a gingerbread house in school.
And many others.
Because talking about food allergy sometimes seems to get across about as well as that text message I got from the nurse. People are so attached to and in love with food. It's like hearing that your best friend goes around and axe-murders people at night- "cookies? really? cookies are harmless! My cookies could never hurt anyone! It's just a cookie." People seem to almost take offense. When I was discussing Her food allergies with Her teacher at the beginning of the year, the teacher seemed a little annoyed- "obviously, I want to keep Her safe." Yes. No one is saying you are going to tie Her up and force peanuts down Her throat. No one is calling you a sadist.
But something that is inherently nice, nourishing, even comforting to you, is- believe it! It's true!- deadly poison for some of us. It is that big a deal to hand out a treat that "looks ok" without reading the label. Or to expect that a little child not only have the 100% infallible judgement to stay away from allergens "because they are old enough to know better", but also to expect them to have superhuman psychic powers and know what ingredients were used in every processed cracker or home-baked treat brought into school, or that someone spilled milk on their chair yesterday and it wasn't washed with soap and water. Or that the girl eating pancakes across the table is about to reach out.
A kindergarten teacher tasked with a bunch of crazy mini-people who have various special needs, language abilities, and behavior problems can easily view a food allergy as just one more kid issue to add to a long list.
Especially when my child does know better, is personally responsible beyond Her years, and classroom days go by smoothly without incidents. It starts to feel like, hey. What's the big deal? She must not be that sensitive, because every time we've bent the rules and let kids with peanuts/eggs/milk sit next to Her at the table so far, it's been fine.
Until it isn't.
It may seem harsh to tell a five-year-old that She could have died on a bathroom floor. Or to tell it to Her teacher. But it's true.
It's a strange world, as a parent, when you spend a whole afternoon in the ER, when your child gets a big swollen eye, and you feel thankful. But I'm dance-a-jig, shout-to-the-stars, prayers-of-thanks grateful for that ugly swollen eye.
Because even though She had a couple of really bad days- She's still here.
As for the nurse and the teacher, of all the info I've showered them with since before school even started, this episode I think had the effect on them that those three intelligible key words in the transcribed text had on me. It was just a swollen eye. But, I hope, it was enough for them to get the message.
You are a strong momma, raising a strong little girl! Glad this teachable moment was just that... a teachable moment! Here's to this being your only episode this year!
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