I don’t know…
“How could you not know? How could you NOT know?”
One of my favourite lines from the film ‘The Prestige’ (continuing my unnecessary series of links to Christopher Nolan films…), exclaimed by Hugh Jackman’s Robert Angier to his former colleague Christian Bale’s Alfred Borden; desperately trying to find out whether he used a dangerous knot in the magic trick that went wrong and killed his girlfriend.
It comes to my mind as a quote more often than perhaps it should in relation to Piglet.
For all the research, food diaries, symptom awareness and general parental fussing that we’ve done to help Piglet through his allergies; it amazes me that we aren’t more sure of when he’s having an allergic reaction. Earlier this week, on Monday night, Piglet took the best part of 2 hours to put down to bed and then two hours later woke screaming and crying. It took the best part of another two hours two calm him down enough to go back to sleep. In our bed, and having willingly swallowed a dose of antihistamine and paracetamol first. On the face of it, describing it like that, it sounds like a classic allergic reaction. But the truth is, I honestly don’t know.
There are several reasons why I’m not sure. He’s been a bit poorly lately – struggling with a cough and snotty with a cold. Ironically, that could be a symptom of a sustained exposure to an allergen or just a sign of the change in season and the types of bugs that tend to go round nurseries (Piglet) and schools (Wife) at this time of year. Next, he wasn’t really displaying any symptoms of an allergic reaction apart from the crying/unsettled behaviour. His tummy wasn’t hard, he wasn’t particularly windy (a bit, but not clearly ringing alarm bells) and he wasn’t arching or straining his abdomen. Thirdly, Piglet fell asleep within 10 minutes of having the antihistamine. Sounds like that cured the problem, but it makes you drowsy even as an adult, so it might have just knocked him out.
The truth is it’s a minefield and for all I know about Piglet’s allergies, I’m very reluctant to just assume that everything that might be wrong can be explained by his allergies. Little people get upset, they go through development kicks, they get poorly, they have nightmares and not all of those things can be attributed to animal and plant proteins. Also, I get defensive about not knowing and I really struggle with that. I have spent a fair amount of time and energy explaining to people what it’s like managing allergies, trying to raise awareness of the importance of food labelling and defending the lengths we go to in order to minimise Piglet’s exposure. Surely not knowing whether Piglet is having an allergic reaction or not completely undermines this?
But I don’t think it does. I am 95% sure that Piglet is allergic to both Cow’s milk and soya and I know some of the symptoms that come with the reactions to them. If it was more obvious that he was allergic then we’d have spotted the connection much sooner and if it wasn’t such a big problem we wouldn’t limit where and what we ate so much. And I wouldn’t be writing this blog!
I’m reminded of a friend and housemate, Sam, from university who found out in her early 20’s that she was celiac. Without wanting to be sensationalist, her life was turned around by the realisation and the benefits that followed adjusting her diet. She actually blogs about it (http://thehappycoeliac.com) and has created a gluten-free recipe book. As part of this, she’s occasionally sent gluten-free items to taste test and review. Unbelievably, one of the items (I can’t remember exactly what it was, some sort of cereal?) she was sent turned out to not be gluten-free and she’d been eating it occasionally for a few weeks. She’s been suffering a range of health issues over this time and only pieced together the links when she realised. Not having realised that she was having a reaction does not in any way lessen the significance of it, it’s just really difficult to disentangle causation in non-acute food allergies (her words, stated more clearly than I ever could articulate).
I’m aware, considering the scale of media coverage around life-threatening allergies at the moment, that I’m very lucky Piglet can have a reaction without his life being put at risk. It doesn’t make his allergies unimportant, but I know it could be much worse. Although, in a sense, it doesn’t make any difference – I will do everything I can to help Piglet avoid his allergens, teach him what to look out for, and love and comfort him through every reaction that he has. But it doesn’t mean I’ll always know what’s going on for him. It’s an important part of understanding allergies to appreciate that.