Mr. Peanut Can’t Kill Me Anymore

I was diagnosed with a severe peanut allergy when I was 2.  Eating the smallest traces of peanuts would cause me to get hives, throw up and struggle to breathe.  For my whole life I’ve avoided peanuts.  I’ve missed out on a lot of candy, cookies, donuts and other kinds of food.  It made Halloween, which is my favorite holiday, very difficult because I couldn’t eat most of the candy I collected.  I always had to be very cautious about reading ingredients and staying away from peanuts.  One time I had to go the hospital in an ambulance because I accidentally ate candy that had peanuts.  I NEVER want to do that again as it was scary and I had to get stabbed with an Epipen needle which was painful and awful.

In the spring of 2011 I joined a peanut desensitization study.  I went to the New England Food Allergy Treatment Center where a doctor and nurse would give me small doses of peanut flour.  The nurse would mix the peanut flour in applesauce then I would have to eat it.  I would be watched for 2 hours to make sure I didn’t have any kind of reaction.  Then I would go home and eat that dose every day for two weeks.  After the two weeks was up, I would go back to the clinic and the doctor would increase the amount of peanut flour I ate.  I started at .8 mg which is less than one spec of peanut flour which was really hard to see.  I made it all the way to the last increase which was 383mg of peanut flour.  383mg of peanut flour is equal to 3 peanuts.  Here I was eating the very food that could make me sick or kill me and I wasn’t reacting, it was crazy.

The best part about the study is that I now am in the maintenance part which means my daily medicine is 3 peanut M&Ms.  If I eat the 3 peanut M&Ms every day I am safe to eat other foods that have traces of peanuts or manufactured on equipment that also processes peanuts.  Candy for medicine is awesome and tastes so much better than the peanut flour mixed in with applesauce.  So far I’ve had a couple of Dairy Queen Blizzards, eaten donuts from Dunkin Donuts and had KitKat bars. It’s a whole new world of delicious foods.  Most importantly I know that I won’t be sick or die from accidentally eating peanuts which is a big relief for me and my family.

~Sean Fitzgerald