No More Nuts!

We had quite a scare this last weekend with Tys and had to rush him to the hospital. We had no idea that he was allergic to nuts and, found this out the hard way! It began around noon on Saturday when my mom and I took the kids to visit our friend, Jona. We were just hanging out and he ate 3 cashews that were on her coffee table. Then, we left not too long after that and headed to the duck pond. It was pretty windy so when his eyes starting getting red and itching we thought that maybe it was just allergies from being outside. Casey met us for lunch at our local pizza parlor and that's when we noticed that his face was getting all red and rashy (this had happened one other time when he peanut butter but, it went away and I never gave him peanut butter again) Well, it progressively got worse and he kept itching his eyes and ears. We cut our lunch short and got home to give him some Benadryl. He then proceeded to gag and ended up throwing up all over Casey and himself! Poor Tys was miserable. We got him (and Casey!) cleaned up and noticed the rash was quickly going down his body. Thankfully, my mom (being a nurse) knew exactly what was going on and said we needed to get him to the hospital right away. So, she and I wrapped him in a towel and drove to the E.R. Once in the E.R., Tys got two shots and a breathing treatment right away (since he was wheezy) A little while later he wasn't getting any better and was now completely covered head to toe in one big, red welt. You couldn't even see any separation between the blotchy rashes. So, it was decided that he needed the steroid by i.v. and my mom, being the most experienced with doing child i.v.'s, was voted to do it! She did a great job :) Poor Tys was crying this whole time and kept saying "I'm done"; he just wanted to go home! I admit that by now I was beginning to really worry because it just wasn't getting any better.... I called Casey and had him (and Trent) come down to the E.R. And, thankfully, our friend Sharla picked Katie up and took her home to their house... Once the I.V. steroid kicked in, things started getting better. The one big welt started becoming more of a rash and slowly kept going away over the course of the hour that we had to wait. During that time he had a few visitors (Joe and Jerry) had a sucker and just laid in my arms. The I.V. was in his thumb sucking arm so that caused a few issues :) Anyhow, around 4:30 we got to go home and he immediately got a bottle and went to bed! The poor guy was so exhausted. We may live in a small town without a big fancy hospital but, I have to say that it's a great hospital with awesome people who work there! Of course, we were warned that more nuts for Tys could mean an even worse episode than this one so, we are now watching everything he eats and making sure he doesn't have any more nuts!!