Jacque Hendrickson 2

Eating Alone

When you always have to be aware and cognizant of what you’re eating, you develop very meticulous ways of going about the act of meals. These develop into certain kinds of rituals that must be followed, or else chaos breaks out. Often, the rituals don’t even have anything to do with the foods you’re allergic to; the constant awareness of ingredients causes you also to have awareness in how you’re eating.

When I go to the school cafeteria, I must always pick up a tray and then silverware after I have gotten my food. My friends have pointed out numerous times that it’s silly to not get your silverware at the same time because they’re right next to the trays, and often pick up a set for me. I’m not exactly sure why, but for some reason it makes me feel uncomfortable to get my silverware before food.

When I get a “Grab and Go” lunch to take back to my room, I always get the same foods. I then carefully arrange each item on my faux wood and floral upholstered lap desk while I put an episode on the DVD player of my computer that my roommate happens to have every season collection for. Even if my roommate is not in the room, I use the headphones. The mayonnaise must be spread on my turkey sandwich in the same exact crisscrossing lines and I have to cut out the goopy insides between the triangular holes of tomatoes.

My life was in disarray when I first arrived at Knox and hadn’t yet established the pattern of how I go about these things. It’s somewhat different with every location. Up until a few years ago when I started college, I was able to keep the constant food eating pattern of my home, every now and then discovering that I outgrew a certain food allergy and then being able to adjust my diet in a significant way. My life has been a chain of renegotiating these rules.
Allergies found me when I was a baby. The first memory I have of an allergic reaction involves me and a box of Captain Crunch cereal when I was about three. Every now and then this incident appears in some form in my dreams.
I’m standing in front of one of the cabinets below the counter at ground level. I pull the ivory knob open with my chubby, little hand and fall backward onto my butt. I push the cabinet open further, feeling the honey colored finish on the wood; the door is somewhat sticky. There, resting on the shelf between the cylindrical tin of the ugly man with white hair and a blue hat and the box of cereal that I always steal the pink marshmallows out of is a yellow box with another ugly man with white hair and a blue hat. He looks so happy, and there’s a colorful maze on the back of the box. I’ve seen my older sister, Cindy, eating this before.

I shove my chubby arm into the box and start eating the cereal. I can’t recall accurately if I actually liked the cereal or not, because every time since then has involved negative reactions in which I end the experience by throwing up. And, foods that you throw up rarely taste good afterwards.

The next thing I remember is being one with the beige interior of my mom’s car, laying down feeling like my stomach is going to collapse, my cheek resting against the melted crayon stain in the upholstery. I feel my throat closing and I panic, all I can do is concentrate on the crayon stain and think about the box that it came from, and how I thought it was funny when it melted, but how it doesn’t really seem funny now.

My mom has told me that the only thing that saved me as she raced to the hospital was that I threw up the majority of the Captain Crunch, expelling a great deal of the allergen from my system. She says that I came into the living room while one of her friends was over, looking like a little red balloon. That’s when we discovered that I’m allergic to peanuts.

There comes a point where a parent might wonder if all the visits to the hospital cause long-term effects on the psychological workings of a child. It’s certainly a traumatic event for a young child to go through, on top of the fact that their suffering is stemmed from something their parents feed them. Trust may be lost between the parent-child relationship.

It has been found that children with allergies have increased anxiety problems in and out of the school situation (Suneeta and Manassis). When I was little, I rarely talked to anyone outside of my family. I never liked being starred at or considered abnormal. I still remember the day I taught myself to be messy. As a child I had advanced visual, spatial and motor skills for my age; so, while every other child’s desk was left in random disarray, everything in mine was always neat and lined up perfectly. I always wished that I could have the kind of desk where the top folds up, even though they’re annoying because whenever you want to get something from the inside, everything on top slides down and off.

One day a girl sitting next to me looked at how my two pencils, two pens, pencil case, work books, text books and crayon box were all neatly stacked in my desk with precision. “You’re so clean!” she said, and then she pointed this out to the rest of the class. Mrs. Fair-Bear came by smiling, giving me a gold star to put on my pencil-shaped nametag. The next day I purposefully messed everything up. So, you can imagine how embarrassed I was when I had to pick from the candy grab bag made especially for me by my mom because the cupcakes and other birthday treats kids brought were made with egg whites or other things I was allergic to. I remember my second grade teacher who I admired because she’d always wear the crispest looking skirt suits, bright red with shiny, gold buttons. She’d always stare at me with her lips pursed as I gingerly made a decision of what I was going to choose from my special bag. It made me nervous as I felt her eyes, and the eyes of everyone else in the classroom on me.

How to deal with other people and my allergies has been an unexpected challenge that has evolved in different ways over the years. Many questions have been brought up. What should I do if they give me a peanut butter sandwich? Should I make sure that they aren’t making me one now? Or, is that being too upfront and forward? Can I ask her to please not eat those peanut butter cookies in our small dorm room? The process of learning rules and etiquette began when I was very young.
My grandma paid for every girl in my family to take manners lessons at the age of twelve. My sister, who loved all things girly, raved about them and was a pet to the manners teacher, Maria Everding. However, when it was my turn to be twelve and take the manners classes, I was still on the edge of the stage in which I didn’t yet care how I looked. I rarely brushed my hair, I didn’t care that my glasses were big and dorky and I wore over-sized clothes because I hated the feeling of tight fabric (that’s another thing about allergies, your body increases it’s sensitivity in all ways, including touch. So, I was very aware of the different ways that various textures of fabrics would feel against my skin. This is something I learned to not let bother me as much as I developed into a self-conscience adolescent with other worries beyond minor skin irritations due to fabric).

Browsing around the internet, I came across a website for the manner lessons I took. It was interesting to see how the class has changed and reached out to the web, but still has remained the same. The website still reflects the text book of the course that I. It was all about manners and being a poised lady in traditional senses for the contemporary world. I always felt sorry for the model of the book, who happened to be Mrs. Everding’s daughter. There were hundreds of pictures of her happily and wholesomely going about daily activities with utmost perfection. When we were given laminated pictures of her daughter’s face with circles drawn to show us how to wash our faces in the show, I felt so embarrassed for the girl that I threw it away. “Always use upward motions when washing your face and applying makeup because your skin is going nowhere but down,” Mrs. Everding lectured us.

Considering that I didn’t even like brushing my hair, I definitely did not want to go to manners school. Our final was a tea party held at Mrs. Everding’s house. “Here, have some ice cream punch,” she said, smiling at me with her teeth. I stared down at the little flower-molded glass that contained a raspberry colored liquid with creamy chunks floating around the inside. I couldn’t recall the chapter on what to do when you’re allergic to random foods. Oh wait, there wasn’t such a chapter! Mrs. Everding’s daughter obviously never had to carry a large, rude looking epi-pen in her faux Chanel clutch. I definitely did not want to go through another session of organizing my closet, writing thank you letters to Mrs. Everding for teaching me manners so wonderfully, having to walk through the women’s lingerie section in the middle of Dillards to get to class every Saturday morning or endure another run-way fashion show in the middle of the mall where all my friends could see. I carefully began to drink the punch, feeling my throat slowly swell and my stomach knot as the tea party went on.

I don’t like to disturb people when I have allergic reactions, even if it’s not my fault that I consume something that I’m allergic to. Even though people are very apologetic and worried, there is often a sort of bitterness when they don’t understand the implications.

I was staying with my friend from Mary Washington at her home in Greenbelt, Maryland for a weekend. At the end of my trip, her mother insisted that I take a piece of pecan brittle for the road. I put the hard piece of candy into my mouth and started to let it melt. Instantly, I knew that there was something wrong. Even though I hadn’t even chewed it, it was already too late because some of the saliva had slid down my throat to my stomach. I ran to bathroom and started rinsing out my mouth and furiously brushing my teeth.

My friend’s family raced about, giving me medication which I just had to take again every twenty minutes because I would throw up the contents of my stomach again. After a few hours of this, I was completely exhausted, and my stomach still felt like it was going to implode. So, I passed out on my friend’s bed for four hours. We were supposed to get an early start back to school, but we didn’t end up leaving till nine o’clock at night. I felt incredibly bad for hindering her family and making them put off what their activities for the day due to my allergies.
There’s a test that can be done on a child’s blood to see if they still produce the antibodies that react against the food they are allergic to (McCarthy). I instantly feel the antibodies begin to fight when eating peanuts, which can occasionally creep up in the sauce of different dishes at restaurants. When I went to California with my friends on a Spring Break trip I put something in my mouth that had a peanut sauce, and even though again I didn’t chew or swallow, my throat began to close up. I felt the antibodies at work as my stomach began to grind itself and my throat felt large, cumbersome and as though a fat rat was clawing at the tunnel. We were at a Vietnamese restaurant with some of my friend Rachel’s important cousins in the movie business, one of them being Spike Jonze, who Rachel referred to as Adam. I sat in the posh bathroom, hugging the toilet, not really caring to think about how many germs were on the floor and feeling like I was being tortured on an alien spaceship due to the single green bulb that illuminated the room. I felt like an imbecile, remembering the looks on everyone’s face as I hurriedly asked if there were peanuts in the sauce, spit it out in my napkin and then hurried to the bathroom to begin washing my teeth out with industrial hand soap. As I lay on the ground, hoping to throw up, I thought about how stupid her cousins must find me. I was fighting off the urge to run back out to the table and explain the seriousness of the situation and hoped that instead it would naturally leave my system. Despite the fact that I was in pain, I couldn’t help but think how rude it would be to interrupt their dinner. A few minutes later I was peeled off the floor by them. My friends still shout out “Don’t eat a peanut!” to me whenever we go to restaurants.

Just being in a small, poorly ventilated room with peanuts can cause my eyes to water and my nose to itch. When my roommate eats peanut butter cookies in the room I pack up my books and go to the study lab or talk to a friend in her room rather than confronting her about my discomfort. I feel like my life has been a series of inconveniencing people. It may seem like a very simple solution to an outsider, one may ask why I don’t just kindly ask my roommate to eat peanut products somewhere else. But, if you always have to ask little favors such as these, it starts to make you feel like a nag.

Christina Desforges, a Canadian teenager, fell to her death after kissing her boyfriend, Yan Desormeaux, who had just eaten peanut butter (People). Whenever someone I’m dating wants to eat peanuts around me, I remember this, and then tell him about my situation. I wouldn’t die from such small traces left on someone’s lips; but it definitely would cause a reaction. It’s often embarrassing, and it makes me feel very uptight because it’s hard to convey the importance without making a huge deal out of my food allergies.

When my boyfriend ordered a peanut butter shake from Steak n Shake I sat there for a second, trying to figure out what to do. At first I was a little offended because I knew that he was aware of my peanut allergy. However, I reminded myself that people often don’t understand the seriousness. When I asked him to please change the shake because I’m incredibly allergic to peanuts he initially looked at me strangely and maybe even thought I was joking. I uncomfortably had to explain to him that I wouldn’t be able to kiss him till he very thoroughly brushed his teeth if he were to drink the shake. I’m also allergic to milk, but the reaction isn’t as bad, and milk doesn’t reside in a person’s mouth for as long as peanut butter does.
It turns out that the social implications of food allergies can have a very detrimental effect on a child’s home environment. According to a survey found in a Pediatrics for Parents journal, the kind of publication that is readily available to parents of health-problem children, out of the parents surveyed 41% reported a increased level of stress, within their family dynamics, 34% had issues with missing school and even 10% decided to home school their children (Pediatrics for Parents). This makes sense to me because I can remember the bitterness that developed between my sister and me at an early age when suddenly the attention of being an only child was torn away from her and being zeroed in on a baby who was constantly being rushed to the ER.

The question of how my food allergies would affect my sister, Cindy, was constantly brought up when we were children. Should she be denied a certain food just because I couldn’t eat it? And, what kind of a relationship is this creating between the two of us if either she’s eating something that I wish I could eat or she’s being kept from something she’d like to eat because of an intruder (me) in the family?
When I eight my aunt brought me to a Chinese restaurant for the first time in my life. My family had always avoided ethnic restaurants because the food wasn’t simplistic enough, so they couldn’t always be certain that I wouldn’t be allergic to something in the ingredients. But, my sister wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant, so my aunt figured that Cindy shouldn’t be held back just because I’m allergic to things; she decided that we could carefully communicate with our waiter and check the menu.

I ended up loving the food there, and became very interested in trying different dishes from around the world. But, my mom was still upset, and the question of should my aunt have really done this, was brought up. Should others have to lose out on food opportunities because one child has allergies?

It’s interesting how much a diet for medical reasons can affect the dynamics of a family, because it seems absurd and like something that really shouldn’t matter. But, I guess it makes sense because eating is such a huge staple to family life and life in general. It’s what drives animals to hunt, it’s what causes men and women to work long hours to feed their families. American culture has turned the meal experience into something fast and easy. The solutions to allergy problems may often not be fast and easy. But, I was taught in high school French class that many Europeans still think of it as a leisurely time to spend every night with their family.

It can often be frustrating for a child with allergies. The hardest part for me was not being left out of food-eating activities; instead it was the social implications. I remember wanting to lay the blame somewhere, maybe on my family hereditary history. But, neither of my parents had allergies. I’ve considered that maybe it’s due to environmental causes of how I was raised. However there’s no evidence that the absence of certain foods will cause a child to have allergies; unless either of the parents has them already (McCarthy).

A study found that children with food allergies may often be excluded from peer groups and activities and teachers may often be uninformed in medicine and not know the serious implications that arise with allergies (Masia). In third grade the reward for learning our multiplication time tables was an additional topping on your ice cream sundae for a party. My mom argued with this teacher over and over about how it was excluding me from the group activity and that the small class shouldn’t be rewarded with something I couldn’t even eat. The teacher responded with “That’s not my problem. Do you expect me to keep the whole class from the treat?” To this day I still do not know my multiplication tables because as a young kid, I had no incentive to learn them like my peers did, and was in turn isolated from the group. The parents helping out felt sorry for me and gave me all the toppings in a bowl.
When people find out that I have allergies, they often have a very intense reaction of pity and dismay. They ask “how can you live without ice cream?” My answer is pretty simple, it’s easy to live without something you didn’t grow up eating, because you don’t have an acquired taste for it and therefore fail to miss it. All memories of me eating ice cream involve becoming very sick. The fact that I can’t eat certain foods is really not problematic. The problem comes in the social implications and how they have shaped me into who I am today.

The question can be asked, should schools be more aware of the fact that many children have peanut allergies, and ban the consumption and craft making of peanut products all together? But then, one could argue that if we’re going to do that, we may as well ban sports for the kids that are incapable of walking.

In a study conducted with school age children, it was found that 44% had skin reactions and 41% had inhalation reactions when a peanut-related craft was done in the classroom (Munoz-Furlong). When I was in elementary school I had to leave the room and sit in the nurse’s office for an hour while my classmates made peanut butter-covered pinecone bird feeders. I felt isolated and as though I was missing out; I liked birds and crafts just as much as any other kid. The school nurse felt sorry for me, so she let me eat the saltines and drink the orange juice that is normally only given to the kids who don’t eat breakfast because they come from troubled families. And then, once I returned to the classroom, I ended up having to go back to the nurse’s office because I held hands with a girl who had just made a peanut butter pine cone at recess then touched my eyes. Now, schools are learning the implications of allergies in the school situation. Different schools are looking to phase out peanut butter all together, an essential staple of the American diet.
It is one matter when a school is not adequately prepared for the possible case that a child develops an allergic reaction, but it is quite scarier when hospitals do not know how to properly treat such a situation. A study conducted by Tufts found that many hospital emergency rooms do not follow the adequate procedures to deal with cases of allergic reactions (Food Allergies Under-treated). Out of the patients surveyed “16 percent received epi-pen prescriptions,” and “Only 12 percent were referred to allergists.” The epi-pen is a vital staple to a person with food allergies. You never know what the effect may be depending on the amount of food eaten. An epi-pen is a giant shot the size of a fat marker. Although I very rarely carry my epi-pen on me because it’s cumbersome and unnecessary and I always realize I’m eating something I’m allergic to before having enough to go into shock, it’s still nice to know I have one in my room. I never know what to do with good friends; who should or should not know how to work my shot. And, is it too much to ask someone to stab me with strong medications if I’m having a terrible reaction?
Although allergies may still be somewhat difficult on one’s day to day activities, there has been a great progression in making the life of allergy prone people easier since I was a young child. Since 1994 there has been a law requiring manufacturing companies to label the ingredients in foods, but last year in 2006 there was a law passed requiring all companies to clearly post a grouping of eight foods in “plain language” (fish, crustacean shell fish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soybeans) on labels below the ingredients list (Dahl). This grouping comprises 90% of food allergies in the world. I have found this to make shopping for foods particularly easier and faster. I remember when food labels were not written in clear language and I was the only seven-years-old I knew that could read and understand what “whey” is.

As time is progressing, companies and corporations are being asked to be more cognizant, teachers are asked to be careful and parents are being taught how to handle children with food allergies. Due to the increase of the web, it will be easier for people to network and share ideas through food allergy organizations. The website for the Food Allergy Anaphylaxis Network offers a free food allergy program for schools, sections for kids, teens, recipes and the latest news. It’s a lot easier to keep informed and up to date on research then it has been in the past.
I vaguely remember 50 small needles being put into my back during testing when I was about four years old. But, my mom and grandma will remember the incident very graphically forever. My grandma has explained to me how hard it is to watch a small, helpless child look up at you with “why?” in their eyes, “why are you putting me through this?” This may affect family more than the actual patient. In the long-run I can forget the pain of the shots; but, can my grandma and mom forget the unnecessary guilt they felt?