Excerpted from the Autumn 2007 issue of Allergy Today. For more articles like this, subscribe to Allergy Today, click here.

Anaphylaxis – the word that strikes terror into the heart of every parent with an allergic child, and every adult with severe allergies. An as yet unpublished New Zealand research has suggested a surprisingly high incidence. Inga Stünzner discovers you can take heart in knowing that the reaction is reversible, as long as you have the necessary medication and a well-rehearsed action plan.

the big one: the most frightening reaction of all

Like most Kiwi families, the Gallens enjoy watching rugby. And last August was gearing up to be a typical night like any other rugby night as the family prepared to watch the Bledisloe Cup rugby match on TV with a group of friends in Wellington.

“It was the worst dinner party ever,” Megan Gellan recalls. “I was rushing to get the dinner served before the start of the match when my daughter, Gabrielle, was sick in front of our guests!”

Distracted by this turn of events, Megan gave her six-year-old son, Oliver, his sister’s burrito, which contained cheese. Oliver immediately commented that the food tasted spicy, and had a large glass of water.

“One minute later he came to me and said that his throat felt funny. I looked at him carefully because his voice sounded different, and although he only had one small hive I immediately called the emergency number 111,” Megan says.

“It was a very distressing situation. I was in a panic while trying to give the operator details of what was happening. For all that I had prepared for a major reaction like this, I was still slightly reluctant to administer the EpiPen as we hadn’t used it before.”

At this stage, Oliver was breathing with great difficulty and Megan and her husband Peter managed to administer the auto-injector of adrenaline while the emergency operator calmed them down. It helped a little and Oliver was bundled into an ambulance.

“The first ambulance officer either didn’t have any adrenaline or was not trained to administer it, so we had to divert to another small hospital to pick up another ambulance officer. This officer administered a second dose of adrenaline as Oliver started to have more breathing difficulties and this did improve his condition.”

Oliver had a third dose of adrenaline in ER at Wellington Hospital as well as other drugs to help relieve his condition, but it took a further three hours for all reactions, hives, and swelling to subside and he and his mum stayed overnight for observation.

“It was a shock to realise that Oliver had developed anaphylaxis to dairy products.” Megan and Peter had discovered he was allergic to eggs and peanuts when he had his first anaphylactic reaction in 2001 at the age of nine months when the family was living in Canada.

“Of course we didn’t know at the time what was wrong with him other than my mother’s intuition that something was seriously wrong. We raced him to Oakville hospital in Toronto although when we arrived, his swelling had reduced and I was apologising for overreacting. Luckily we stayed in for observation because an hour later Oliver started to have another anaphylactic reaction. It was a most frightening experience, particularly as we didn’t fully understand what was happening, only that his life was hanging in a delicate balance.

“We were given a Junior EpiPen before being discharged from the hospital and started the long process of working out what he could and could not tolerate.

“Arriving back in New Zealand in mid 2003 was daunting as Oliver’s eczema flared severely. We struggled to know what was wrong. An emergency resulting in a hospital stay lasting for four days finally provided an answer, when a skin patch test showed dairy products were causing his severe eczema. We of course immediately eliminated these products from his diet, and his eczema slowly improved.”

Excerpted from the Autumn 2007 issue of Allergy Today. Subscribe to Allergy Today, click here.