As foster parents, we must attend First Aid & CPR training regularly, and within that four hour class we briefly go over epi pens. I was prepared to use it if need be, but I am glad I've never had to. While getting to know the child, I asked him what he was allergic too and what caused him to have to use the epi pen and his answer was berries- all berries.
For a year we've kept him away from all things "berry" including Paisley's Strawberry Shortcake Doll (hey, she's scented...) As you can tell, I really didn't want an excuse to ever have to jab him in the leg.
All of our kids would have strawberry poptarts and he'd have to have the plain ole brown sugar ones. We have a blueberry bush in our backyard and the kids would spend hours picking blueberries that Aunt Haley would put into pies, but I'd never let him taste them. My parents even had to drive across town to buy his candy for his Christmas candy because all they could find was artificial flavoring "berry" stuff, and no one wanted to test it- especially on Christmas.
A couple of weeks ago, this child got the worst case of hives I've ever seen. I ended up rushing him to the emergency room because I assumed he would get to the point where he'd need the epi, but after three hours of waiting, we were told hives were common and harmless. You could have fooled me. He looked like he had some flesh eating disease. I couldn't stand to send him to school covered in whelps, so we spent a lot of time in doctors offices and eventually landed an emergency appointment at the allergist.
Fast forward to today and here we were, together again, headed to the allergist. I kept looking over at him in the passenger seat and he had four boxes in his lap- a box of blueberries, a box of strawberries, a box of raspberries and a box of blackberries. Today was the day he was going to endure the somewhat painful (I don't care what the brochure says about it being 'painless') allergy testing, and they were going to also test him for "all berries".. He was excited.
After hours and hours of poking and waiting, he was clear to eat any and every thing, including berries. No known allergies. He passed all of the test. Apparently, sometimes you can get hives "just because"..
As we were in the elevator headed down to the parking deck, he looks over and says to me, without skipping a beat..
"They lied to me. I am not allergic to berries and I am not worthless."
In that moment all I could say was, "I love you... Berry, berry, much."
And then we laughed and giggled all the way to the van, but on the way home, while everyone was passed out from the long doctors office visit, I ugly cried.
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