No Cashews For You!!

We found out the hard way that Jordan is very allergic to what we think is cashews. We were fortunate enough that it didn't seem to effect his breathing at all but it was still pretty scarey. That night we had cashew chicken for dinner. Jordan liked it so much that he had two good-sized servings. Within 15 minutes, he began complaining that his eyes were burning. I had him take off his glasses and he had a few hives on his eyelids so I immediately gave him some Benadryl. Trevor was also starting to itch so I sent Jordan downstairs to lay down on the coach while I gave Trevor some Benadryl. When I got back downstairs less than five minutes later, this is what I found.

I decided pretty quickly to take Jordan to Urgent Care (his breathing was fine but the swelling kept getting bigger.) They immediately took him back to a room and the doctor gave him some oral steroids. They watched him for about 30 minutes and the swelling kept getting bigger so he had to be taken to the ER by ambulance. Keep in mind that the picture above was taken well before the worst of the swelling occurred. At the ER, they gave him more Benadryl, more oral steroids and some Zantac. An hour later, he wasn't getting any better, so they administered an Epipen shot. The poor guy was so drugged that he doesn't even remember getting the shot. The swelling did finally start to reduce a little so they released him with a prescription for oral steroids and two Epipens. The epinephrine had him shaking so uncontrollably that he could barely walk out. Plus, his eyes were still really swollen so everyone in the waiting room was staring at him. I felt so bad. It took three days for the swelling to go away completely but he is finally better. He now has an appointmnet with an allergist in February where, hopefully we will find out if it was the cashews that caused this.