If you haven't seen it, Allergic Living's editor Gwen Smith's piece, "Who's to Blame for another Allergy Tragedy". is a must read. She correctly points to those of us in the food allergy community as the group who must stay on top of our schools when it comes to keeping children safe. Whenever I talk to someone about the EpiPen, I always add that there is no lasting physical harm to using it. We must make sure that everyone knows if they think they should be using the EpiPen, they probably should be.
I just registered for the Allergy Ready CARE course. It's easy to sign-up and the course is free. It takes about 60 minutes to go through the learning module. While the information is geared toward educators, I encourage you to take the course (not to brag, but I got 100% on the quiz given at the beginning) and then pass the website link to your school administrators and nurses encouraging them to make it available to school personnel.
While I may have aced the quiz, I realized that when I administered antihistamine to my child on Monday for an allergic reaction, I should have instead used epinephrine. Antihistamines are not the first line defense for an allergic reaction. I know this, but honestly, in the moment, you still question it. Injecting is traumatic...then the ambulance needs to be called...then it's several hours in the ER. That said, we were lucky this time that the antihistamine worked.
So, sign up and take the Care course and then pass the course on to your kids' caregivers and schools.It's a great way to make sure everyone is on the same page.
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