Reducing Anxiety After Hearing About Anaphylaxis Tragedies
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As food allergy parents, it’s heartbreaking to hear about tragedies caused by anaphylaxis. It feels personal, like we’ve lost one of our own. Our hearts break, and it’s hard to shake the sadness that comes with knowing such a loss could have been prevented.
It’s okay to feel this way—it’s human. But while we support the families affected and work through our own emotions, we also need to be mindful of how those feelings can shift into fear and anxiety, especially for our own loved ones. Today, we’re going to talk about how to manage those emotions, stay grounded, and focus on staying strong together as a community.
I’ll give you 3 important stats that will hopefully reduce your anxiety PLUS I’ll give you positive examples of things we’ve done as a food allergy family that may seem scary, but have turned out well and are completely doable with the right preparation. I hope this episode decreases your anxiety and empowers you and your child!
Dealing With Anaphylaxis-Related Tragedies in the News
First I want to be clear that I’m not a Doctor or Psychologist. However I am an experienced Food Allergy Mom and Mentor who takes food allergies seriously and sticks to evidence-based facts.
It’s hard as a food allergy parent or as someone with food allergies to hear that there’s been a tragic event due to food allergies and anaphylaxis.
Our hearts absolutely break, it’s just so needless and sad. It’s ok to feel this way and do what we can as a community to support the family and our own mental health.
Each and every one of us is valuable and loved, and it’s important to stand together to help each other and make positive change.
But sometimes those feelings of care and concern move into fear and anxiety for our own kids and family members with food allergies. I mean, if it can happen to someone else, it can happen to our kids too, right?
Well, not exactly, here’s 3 things I want you to remember…
There’s a Quiet Majority Thriving Every Day
There are 33 million Americans living with food allergies. For every 1 tragic event due to anaphylaxis, there are still thirty-two million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine people who DID NOT have a tragic event that day, month, and year. That’s a lot of people who are doing fine!
Of course, these are American stats, but hopefully, food allergy friends from Canada and other countries get the point that I’m trying to make.
2. The Chances of A Tragic Event Due to Anaphylaxis is Low
The chances of tragedy from anaphylaxis is very low. The numbers are hard to nail down exactly, but I’ve seen data that says it’s similar to a lightning strike or actually WAY LESS than a tragedy from a car accident.
Lets think about that for a second and let that sink in.
The chances of tragedy from anaphylaxis is WAY less than a tragedy from car accident. This is important because we drive every day and almost everywhere. We don’t let the tragedy due to a car accident stop us from driving. Instead, I argue that we use safety precautions, to make driving safer. So if we can use safety precautions with driving, we can also learn to take food allergy precautions to make eating safer as well. With driving, we wear a seatbelt, follow traffic laws, and other things to make it safer. With food allergies, we carry 2 epinephrine injectors/sources, and ensure we know what we’re eating at all times because that saves lives too.
If you’re interested in how I got these numbers, here are the links and data and how I came up with it.
Links and Statistic Sources
If a child suffers anaphylaxis, the Case Fatality Rate is about .3%* (See below for how the Case Fatality Rate is calculated). That mortality rate is about the same as 1 in every 333 cases of anaphylaxis.
Of course, we never want to even THINK about being that .3%, but these are important numbers to know because the statistics ARE ON OUR SIDE.
For example, the odds of dying from anaphylaxis, if it occurs, are MUCH LESS than the odds of dying in a car crash (which is 1 in 93 vs. 1 in 333 for anaphylaxis)**, yet we never think twice about driving! Instead, we take precautions and use safety measures to make it safer.
** Source: National Safety Council https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/
How Case Fatality Rate is Calculated:
Case Fatality Rate is calculated by dividing the number of deaths from a specified disease over a defined period by the number of individuals diagnosed with the disease during that time; the resulting ratio is then multiplied by 100 to yield a percentage.
Source: https://www.britannica.com/science/case-fatality-rate
2. Anaphylaxis Does Not Instantly Mean Tragedy
This is something I constantly worried about as a newer allergy mom… but I now know that if anaphylaxis occurs, it DOES NOT instantly mean tragedy! Yes, it may be scary, but stats show that if we epi first and epi fast, and carry 2 epinephrine injectors/sources, we can feel confident that our food allergy loved ones will be just fine. (And that doesn’t consider all the precautions we use to make things safer before we get to that point like reading labels, cleaning surfaces, not eating things when we don’t know what is in them etc). So what I’m trying to say is that there are layers to safety and we have to peel back several layers before it comes to tragedy.
Using Our Experiences to Empower Your Family
Here are a few things that WE have done personally that were hard and felt scary at the time. I want you to feel encouraged by these things because, WITH THE RIGHT PREPARATION, I believe that our food allergy families can do anything! Yes, it does take extra prep and management but even that extra prep can be less taxing, if you learn good strategies!
For every one of these challenges I’m going to talk about, I have a workshop where I give you the BEST safety-increasing, time-saving strategies that we have learned after MANY MANY YEARS. Here’s the links if you want more practical knowledge with any of these struggles.
You don’t have to do this alone!
Social Event Survival Pack - RSVP Templates that get hosts to understand how serious food allergies are, without feeling awkward.
90-Minute Variety Booster - Your Quick & Easy Way To Get More Allergy-Friendly Variety You & Your Kids Love
Get Over The Fear of Trying New Foods - Feel calm instead of nauseous so you can give your child the new foods your doctor recommended.
School Allergy Plan Template - Your detailed guide to keeping your child safe and included at school.
Food Allergy Travel Workshop - Our family has traveled worldwide with multiple severe food allergies. Learn my BEST tips and get all the planning checklists and planning templates you need for a trip with food allergies.
Dining Out With Food Allergies - Make dining out as safe as possible and feel confident knowing when it’s safe and when to leave.
Just go to the “GET HELP” page to learn more about all of these workshops!
Here are a few hard things that we’ve done that I hope will encourage you:
We’ve been through 11 years of school plus 2 years of preschool and kindergarten without an allergic reaction. Imagine all the class parties, field trips, camps, and substitute teachers that we’ve been through. This includes overnight camps on a few occasions and a band trip last year. Yes, there were difficult times and challenges when I had to go the extra mile to get people to understand, and I had to do a lot of advocating, not to mention baking, BUT we have not had a reaction in all this time! That is something to celebrate!
2. We have traveled all over the world safely. This includes Mexico, Spain, Ireland, the UK, France, all over Canada, and the US, and of course we’ve been to Disneyland, Disney World and Disneyland Paris too! With that we have done many, many trans atlantic and transpacific flights and across land too. We have done so, so so much research and planning in this area, but it has all paid off and we have been able to do it smoothly, without a reaction.
3. We have introduced new foods safely and done several oral food challenges over the years. My daughter is in OIT and currently working on peanut and walnut which means she needs to do an updose of each of her treatment allergens every six months to a year for the last 7 years or so. AND, she had to do lots of ORAL food challenges before that which allowed her to clear pistachios, almonds, macadamia nut, brazil nut, and more.
4. We have dined out safely for many years. Again, we do a lot of research and asking questions, and yes, we avoid restaurants that don’t answer our questions well, but there are restaurants that take food allergies seriously, and finding them is truly amazing.
So which challenge are you hoping to overcome?
If you’re thinking about helping your child grow into a strong, resilient food allergy adult who is able to manage their allergy and keep themselves safe, I recommend that you educate yourself and then model good habits for your child. Living in fear isn’t empowering. Instead we want to show our kids how to live SAFELY so they aren’t plagued by fear, but instead they take the right precautions to live well.
Conclusion
I hope this information helps ease the fear that comes when we hear about a tragic anaphylactic event.
As always, I encourage you to talk to your board-certified Allergist to see what your child’s individual risks are to further ease your mind.
How about you? What challenges are you hoping to overcome? Share in the comments below!
You may also like these posts:
Letting Go of Food Allergy Envy So You Can Go From Allergy Anxiety To Peace
How To Manage Family During The Holidays When Your Child Has Food Allergies
