When Food Kills

Morgan Baker

Word Count 1263

I spent New Year’s Eve sitting on a rolling stool in a curtained-off cubicle in the Emergency Room with my 27-year-old daughter. She lay in the bed hooked up to monitors and drips. I’d like to say this was an unusual event, but that would be a lie. 

I have visited more ERs than there are dogs at a dog park on a Saturday. Some visits blur together. Others stand out because of how terrifying they were.

A few weekends earlier, my husband, Matt, had called from the living room across the second floor to my office, where I was grading student papers. “Did you see the story about the Bowdoin student?”

 “No. Why?” I asked though, I knew what he was going to say.

 “He died from anaphylaxis.” 

Why was he telling me this? I don’t want to hear these stories. I already know how they end, and they don’t help my anxiety. I want to keep my head tucked under my wing. 

I googled the usual questions running through my head. What happened? Where did things go wrong? What can my family do differently? How would his parents wake up every day? 

 No matter how hard you try to keep your family safe, accidents happen, even with the best of intentions – in restaurants, at parties, even in your own home. 

 My daughter, Ellie, and I met for a New Year’s Eve drink after her shift at the store where she works. The hostess at the new restaurant across the street sat us in a comfy corner of a room that looked like a great uncle’s library with massive bookshelves decorated for the season and leather seats – cozy and welcoming on New Year’s Eve.

As she always does, Ellie informed our server about her allergies and handed her a laminated list to share with the kitchen. She is allergic to many foods, but the hardest to police are the nightshades, which include tomatoes and all peppers, including paprika. She can, however, eat black pepper, as she explains to every server she encounters.

The chef recommended the cheese platter without the spicy pecans, instead of the fries we wanted, because fries would be cross-contaminated with shellfish in the fryer. He assured our server that the butternut squash soup would be safe. Ellie loves butternut squash, so we were pleased. 

When the food arrived, I tasted the soup. “Wow, this has a kick to it,” I said.

“That’s the black pepper,” Ellie responded as she sipped her mulled cider which had also been vetted for spices. 

 I may be almost 65, but I eat like an eight-year-old. I don’t do spicy. I don’t enjoy my mouth on fire. I assumed Ellie was right as I can’t tell the difference between cayenne and black pepper. 

Unfortunately, I was right. There was a kick. Ellie slurped down two spoonfuls of soup and looked up at me.

“Something is in here,” she said. “This isn’t okay.” She went to find our server.

My husband and two daughters carry at least one EpiPen with them at all times. The Bowdoin student didn’t have his. He hadn’t planned on eating at the campus event he attended, and he certainly didn’t plan on eating nuts. He returned to his dorm for his EpiPen when he realized what had happened. But it was too late.

No matter how well prepared you are, there are no guarantees with food allergies. An anaphylactic attack – blood pressure drops, throat closes up, welts appear, stomach betrays you - can happen in minutes, or it can take two hours for the allergen to get into your bloodstream. 

I met my husband a year after he developed a shellfish allergy after eating lobster his whole life. I watched him turn gray and pass out at a wedding after he ate corn that had been roasted with the lobster. He didn’t have his EpiPen then either. But we were lucky. Two wedding guests who were nurses attended to him, dissolving Benadryl in water and forcing it down his throat as his windpipe closed up. The paramedics arrived, and between the nurses, the ambulance, and the hospital, he lived to marry me a month later.

I have been trying to keep my family safe for 35 years.

Three years after the wedding fiasco, I watched my 11-month-old daughter, Maggie, eat peanut butter I slathered onto crackers. I was ecstatic for her to have her first taste of one of my favorites. I lived on peanut butter and fluff as a kid and ate it regularly as an adult. When Maggie’s face swelled and her eyes closed, I called the pediatrician. He asked, “Is she breathing?” 

I promptly threw my jar of peanut butter in the trash. Our home would be nut-free.

When Maggie went to college, the school asked for a volunteer to live with her who would adhere to a no-nuts policy in the room. Tillan did and is still a good friend. The cafeteria staff walked us through the dining hall stations that were safe for Maggie and the ones that weren’t so safe. Then I drove away, hope and fear fighting each other.

At a high school play rehearsal, I stabbed Ellie with a borrowed EpiPen when she had her first allergic reaction to tomatoes at a meal I helped serve. Like her father’s, her allergies arrived later as an unwelcome surprise.  

We live near Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, and I have driven both children and my husband there several times. Ambulances have also regularly made the trek when Matt has fallen in the bathroom and on the sidewalk. When his blood pressure drops fast, he collapses. He can’t get up and can’t breathe.

Matt’s allergic reactions are frequent, and scary, but he is an adult and can take care of himself, sort of. Protecting my daughters was a different story. They were my responsibility, and I was vigilant. Maggie, who grew up with allergies, brought her own desert to birthday parties, and her school adapted lunch policies for her safety. Ellie learned to read ingredients carefully. 

But nothing protects 100 percent. No matter how prepared you are – with laminated cards, long explanations about allergies - you can’t always stop the reactions. No matter how old my children are, and they are young adults now, they will always be the little girls who trusted me to keep them safe. 

On New Year’s Eve, a new chef added crushed red pepper to the soup without telling the head chef. Why? 

The server and manager ran over to our table, and the server grabbed the bowl. “You can’t have this,” she said, fear in her eyes. The manager was contrite, apologetic, and comped our meal. 

Back at our house, Ellie began to turn red, had a scratchy throat, and couldn’t breathe easily. Off we went to the hospital, where she was injected with Epinephrine and pumped full of steroids and Pepcid. 

Shortly after the epi was administered, Ellie looked at me balancing on the stool on wheels next to her bed, and said, “I feel better.” Then we settled in for the waiting period. There is always the chance of a rebound effect, so anytime my family ends up hospitalized for anaphylaxis, we wait for three to four hours. It’s tedious, but necessary, and gives me time for my adrenaline to calm down.

We got home an hour before the ball dropped in Times Square. Freshly showered, wrapped in blankets, we watched the kissing couples, grateful we could welcome in a new year, and wondered what it would bring. 

*

Morgan is an award-winning writer and professor at Emerson College. Her work is featured in The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, The Brevity Blog, Talking Writing, The Bark, Cognoscenti, and Hippocampus, among many regional and national publications. She was also Managing Editor of The Bucket. Her most recent work is the memoir, “Emptying the Nest: Getting Better at Goodbyes.” She lives with her husband and two dogs in Cambridge, where she also quilts and bakes. You can find out more at www.bymorganbaker.com.