In A Nutshell

How did peanut allergies become so common? The latest excerpt from "Cloudy with a Risk of Children.

Image by Couleur from Pixabay

She laboured to breathe as she lay on the trauma bay bed, her face flushed, lips swollen, and her skin covered in hives.

She sat up abruptly and vomited as a nurse worked to connect her to a cardiorespiratory monitor. It showed her heart rate to be elevated at 110 beats per minute; her blood pressure was 80/40, her blood oxygen saturation 84 per cent — both alarmingly low.

Just thirty minutes earlier 16-year-old Sarah had been lunching with her friends at the food court at the local mall. As always, she’d been careful to order a nut-free dish, due to a long-standing allergy to peanuts. On this day she opted for a rice noodle vegetarian stir-fry.

After only a couple of bites, however, her throat began to tingle, and her lips grew puffy. That’s when Sarah realized she didn’t have her Epi-Pen. She’d grown lackadaisical about always having it with her, because she hadn’t had an allergic reaction in years.