http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/conditions/11/28/kiss.death.ap/index.html
The official cause of death was not released, so it may not have been the peanut butter, I suppose.
On the bright side, he now has her mutant powers.
I read that and almost had a coronary. Last week I was in an ice cream shop and there was a teenage couple in line ahead of me. The boy ordered a sundae with peanut butter cups on top. The girl ordered something with fruit. The boy asked her why she didn’t want something yummy like peanut butter, and she replied that she had a fatal peanut allergy. So what did the shithead do? He took a big bite of his sundae and then tried to kiss her!! She kept turning away in disgust, and the shopkeeper actually came up to them and gave the guy hell. The asshole just laughed it off and they left, with him STILL trying to kiss her!!! As the door shut behind them, the shopkeeper muttered, “I hope she dumps him soon.”
The story in the article is from Quebec though, and I’m in Ontario, so I know it’s not the same girl. But it freaked me out at first.
Some people really have no idea just how serious an allergy can be. In this loser’s case he just had a total disregard.
“Hey, you got blood in my peanut butter!”
“And you got peanut butter…cough”
I know, I know. Horrible taste.
Blood and peanut butter just weren’t meant to go together.
In all seriousness, I hope the girl’s family is holding up well. Can’t imagine the boy is feeling psychologically sound either.
And, I guess there is a wrong way to eat a Reese’s.
D&R
Sad. Hopefully, someone, somewhere, will be prompted to figure out why so many people now are that allergic to peanuts. Not enough exposure to the barnyard, too much pollution, engineered foods…what the hell is it?
FYI, here’s a link to Cecil’s column on peanut allergies:
Are peanut allergies for real? 13-Jun-2003
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030613.html
I’ve got food allergies myself (and the eczema, hayfever, and asthma Cecil mentioned).
There’s a really REALLY annoying form of idiot out there that, as soon as he (it’s usually, but not always, a “he”) finds out you have a serious food allergy will try to force feed you the poison. Frequently he thinks this is lots of laffs, will excuse his behavior by saying he’s just “joking around”, or the like. The female version of this (although I’ve encountered in men occassionally, too) will try to sneak the poison into something else to either “prove” you don’t really have an allergy or… well, I don’t know what other reasons they do it, mainly because by that time I’m either on my way to the hospital or someone is trying to restrain me from knocking their teeth out. Yeah, I take it kind of personal.
Fortunately, my husband is very considerate of my dietary limitations, and he’s very careful to not kiss me after eating one of my Forbidden Foods.
If people weren’t such jackasses about food allergies my life (and those of other sufferers) would be a lot easier. Ignorance is curable, and I’m pretty cautious… but when someone is delibrately trying to trick you or force feed you something that’s just a little bit harder to avoid/escape.
And I’ll stop now before we get into Pit territory.
I think a real simple solution to jerks like this would be:
“May I borrow your cell phone, please?”
“Sure. What for?”
“So I can call the police and have you arrested for attempted murder.”
I may have mentioned it but I am allergic to oranges, (I live in Orange County,FL), irish potatoes, and corn. The first two items just give me sinus congestion the third gives me COLON-BLOW Diarrhea and cramping and nausea.
These allergies developed around age 20.
WebMD says that the diarrhea is a form of anaphylasis. :eek:
So one day I will miss the corn starch listing on the box and keel over and die because my body will decide to do something different this time.
Life is a never-ending adventure. :rolleyes:
Some answers on peanut allergy:
Why even minuscule amounts can be deadly:
Peanut proteins are delivered quickly, in large amounts and in highly immunogenic form to immune cells. This may be important in explaining strong allergic reactions to peanuts.
Lotions and creams containing peanut oil can sensitize infants:
Individuals don’t develop allergies to peanuts or other triggering proteins upon their initial exposure. Susceptible people must first create antibodies to an offending protein, based on earlier encounters. Those early exposures don’t even require eating the food. Skin contact with peanut protein, for instance—perhaps through exposure to the small amounts in peanut oil—could, in vulnerable individuals, elicit the allergy-triggering antibodies.
Damn you, sir. I’m going to hell, now.
heehee!
Quite seriously, pressing charges against such people would probably get the message through more effectively than anything else would.
The realization that one could get charged with a felony, or get one’s ass sued off, on account of treating a serious allergy like a joke, would seriously reduce the incidence of people treating it like a joke.
The best response, IMO, would be to play darts with the force-feeders.
“I’m just playing around!” Maybe then they’d get the message.
I knew a woman who, growing up, knew she was allergic to eggs, but also thought she was allergic to hamburgers because every time she ate a hamburger her mother fixed, her mouth would swell up badly. It wasn’t till she was an adult – and this had happened multiple times – that she learned what the problem with her mom’s hamburgers was – her mom would mix an egg in with the meat to “prove” she didn’t really have the allergy!
People can be utter and complete – and obviously occasionally lethal --idiots about other peoples’ allergies.
I think another problem here is that people hear the word “allergy” and think “get a rash” or “get hives” or “get a stuffy nose and runny eyes”. “Allergy” isn’t usually associated very closely with “die”.
That doesn’t make the scoffers/forcefeeders/tricksters any less assholes, though.
This is my besetting fear for my son who is allergic to walnuts in particular, but all tree nuts and peanuts too.
His elementary school is small, and it so happens that last year they were using walnut shells in a craft class when he had an anaphylactic reaction which the entire lower grades and their teachers witnessed.
Comment from his homeroom teacher - you told me he was allergic to nuts but I didn’t realise it meant he shouldn’t handle them. If I hadn’t been too busy loading my kid into the car to get him to hospital I would have decked him. (They also called me at work and then IGNORED my orders to get him to hospital asap - he was still in the school 20 minutes later. But that is another story and they have been read the riot act by the doctor so now they know…)
What terrifies me now is my MIL, who is convinced that “just a bit” will “toughen him up”. Who sent my kids home to me after an afternoon with her, whereupon the older one said “little kid isn’t allergic to peanuts, Mummy” I asked how he knew and was informed that MIL had fed him some to see what would happen. And a few weeks ago refused to listen to my explanations on which meds to give him, and what to do in the case of an attack on a day trip she was planning to take him on. I refused to let him go then, and a miserable argument was had by all until SIL agreed to go along with them and supervise. I just got (re!) labelled as the psycho foreign bitch.
Another great fear is him getting to Junior High and him having some dumb classmate think it would be a great laugh to put some nuts in his lunch.
In the immortal words of a fairly psychotic friend, “These sound like the kind of people I would accidentally kill.”
Oh, whoops, did I accidentally kill you there?
Seriously, may the poor girl rest in peace–what a horribly gruesome way to go. I can’t begin to imagine how the boyfriend is feeling…
Can people cut it out with the jokes on this? I’m not the type that’s easily offended, but my mom has a fatal peanut allergy as well, and this kind of story really hits home. I dread the thought of her running into someone who tries to put a nut in her food to prove her allergy’s “not real”.
The girl was 15. There’s nothing funny about this situation. If she had died of cancer, the first person who said something like “Well, at least she didn’t have any hair for the morgue’s cosmetician to worry about styling!” Would get roasted.
It’s this kind of light-heartedness about serious allergies that ensures that they continue to be taken not seriously.
Oh yeah, me too! My daughter (age 5) has the same allergies. My in-laws are just good at forgetting things. They mean well and all, but I have to remind them at pretty much every visit. It’s sort of awful, but we have to remind them to wear very clean clothing to visit too, because they have a guinea pig and she’s allergic to them as well (though that’s just nasal symptoms of course). Yes, my kid is allergic to her grandparents. I hope that stupid guinea pig dies soon.
My church has potluck dinners all the time and they’re terrifying. Which seems so lame, to hate potluck dinners, doesn’t it?
So here’s a question for you, Hokkaido Brit: how much do you run into nuts in Japan? If I send my daughter to visit her cousin, how much fear do I have to live in? The real problem there is that she’s now allergic to all legumes as well, so I guess it’s pretty hopeless really. But I would love so much for her to be able to travel when she’s older; I guess by then she’ll be responsible for herself, but it’s hard for me to think about letting her go right now.
Oh well, this is really rambly, but I sure feel for that family.