Eggs Still Here!

What a scare we had on Friday night.

For the second time in only three birthdays Daddy again triggered an egg reaction. As many of you know, we recently received word that our daughter's egg allergy disappeared. What we have since realized is that it is gone as long as the eggs are even moderately cooked, e.g. boiled, fried or in baked goods.

On Friday Daddy was baking Madeleine a cake. (Yes, that's right ... Daddy was baking!) As a kid I always enjoyed relieving the mixer's beaters of their cake batter. Madeleine was helping me make the cakes and she asked to lick the beaters. Now that we were free of the egg allergy I thought it would be great fun.

It was fun until she developed at least a dozen large wheals and hives on her face and hands. She then became short of breath and her voice turned raspy and faint. We were very scared but remained calm. This exact scenario plays out in our minds multiple times each day.

We started with Benadryl ... 1 tsp, 2 tsp ... okay, 3 tsp ... finally the reaction stopped advancing.

The scary thing was not the hives but the fact that Madeleine's voice faded and became very raspy. She could not yell, though she could talk quietly. Once we saw the laboured breathing we reached for the autoinjector but the third tsp of Benadryl halted the reaction and over the next hour the wheals and red patches subsided.

The good news is that once the cake was baked, Madeleine was able to eat it without incident.

It seems that the threshold for an egg reaction has increased. In the past, anything short of commercially baked pasta resulted in a reaction. Now it seems that even the smallest amount of heat, such as boiling an egg, is sufficient to prevent reaction.

The batter that she ate contained 8 eggs. Turns out that raw egg is still an issue for our daughter but at least now we know!