When treatment rescues families from a lifetime of peering into the abyss
The Allergy Buster
By MELANIE THERNSTROM, NYT Magazine
For nine years, the greatest challenge Kim Yates Grosso faced each day was keeping her daughter Tessa safe. Tessa was so severely allergic to milk, wheat, eggs, nuts, shellfish and assorted other foods that as a toddler she went into anaphylactic shock when milk fell on her skin. Kim never left her with a baby sitter. She slept with her each night. And when she needed to work, she found a job she could do primarily from home in the evenings. She successfully lobbied the Menlo Park, Calif., school district to provide Tessa with a full-time aide (in accordance with the Americans With Disabilities Act) to shadow her at all times. She made all of Tessa’s food from scratch, including safe treats to bring to birthday parties, when she could persuade her daughter to attend them at all. Tessa never spent the night at a friend’s house — she didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in an unsafe environment.
Originally Kim insisted the whole family eat only the foods Tessa could, but then she realized it wasn’t fair for her younger daughters not to be able to eat like other kids at school and birthday parties. Suppose you couldn’t walk, Kim said, explaining her thinking to Tessa; should I make your sisters sit in wheelchairs too? Kim herself kept to Tessa’s diet, however — Tessa never saw her mother so much as add milk to her tea.
Yet this carefully constructed world was in constant danger of collapse. In 2011, Tessa almost died twice. First, when she was 7, a piece of rye toast turned out to contain traces of wheat. Then, 10 months later, Kim took a small uncharacteristic break from their rigid food routine and bought some Vietnamese summer rolls from a restaurant after quizzing the staff about each of the ingredients. But the clear noodles that she was told were rice turned out to be made of wheat, and soon Tessa was losing consciousness. She didn’t have hives or other external signs parents often rely upon, but internally her body shut down. At her doctor’s office, the medical team had to use two EpiPens, adrenaline-loaded syringes, along with steroids and an array of drugs to bring her back. (Injected adrenaline is the only known antidote with the power to arrest anaphylactic shock, the allergic-immune response that causes tissues throughout the body to swell until the windpipe closes, the lungs collapse and the heart fails.)
(More here.)
For nine years, the greatest challenge Kim Yates Grosso faced each day was keeping her daughter Tessa safe. Tessa was so severely allergic to milk, wheat, eggs, nuts, shellfish and assorted other foods that as a toddler she went into anaphylactic shock when milk fell on her skin. Kim never left her with a baby sitter. She slept with her each night. And when she needed to work, she found a job she could do primarily from home in the evenings. She successfully lobbied the Menlo Park, Calif., school district to provide Tessa with a full-time aide (in accordance with the Americans With Disabilities Act) to shadow her at all times. She made all of Tessa’s food from scratch, including safe treats to bring to birthday parties, when she could persuade her daughter to attend them at all. Tessa never spent the night at a friend’s house — she didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in an unsafe environment.
Originally Kim insisted the whole family eat only the foods Tessa could, but then she realized it wasn’t fair for her younger daughters not to be able to eat like other kids at school and birthday parties. Suppose you couldn’t walk, Kim said, explaining her thinking to Tessa; should I make your sisters sit in wheelchairs too? Kim herself kept to Tessa’s diet, however — Tessa never saw her mother so much as add milk to her tea.
Yet this carefully constructed world was in constant danger of collapse. In 2011, Tessa almost died twice. First, when she was 7, a piece of rye toast turned out to contain traces of wheat. Then, 10 months later, Kim took a small uncharacteristic break from their rigid food routine and bought some Vietnamese summer rolls from a restaurant after quizzing the staff about each of the ingredients. But the clear noodles that she was told were rice turned out to be made of wheat, and soon Tessa was losing consciousness. She didn’t have hives or other external signs parents often rely upon, but internally her body shut down. At her doctor’s office, the medical team had to use two EpiPens, adrenaline-loaded syringes, along with steroids and an array of drugs to bring her back. (Injected adrenaline is the only known antidote with the power to arrest anaphylactic shock, the allergic-immune response that causes tissues throughout the body to swell until the windpipe closes, the lungs collapse and the heart fails.)
(More here.)
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