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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

When I worked at a wilderness summer camp I had a kid in my group that was deathly allergic to peanuts, so weeks before we had to rid the camp of them.

He was about 13, and said when he was little they did that scratch allergy test on his arm and he was in a coma for six months. He carried and Epipen around but told me not to stress. If someone ate a snickers then touched a door knob, and he touched it days later he would be dead on the ground before I had the cap off the pen anyway.

Cool kid, he just took it in stride.

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Slight tangent: How do people with an allergy that severe find out they have an allergy? For example people who know even someone's breath after eating peanuts would threaten their lives. Accidental exposures are likely much worse than that, so how do you end up learning about this severity without dying in the first place? Just running a full allergy test after an unexplained exposure to traces of "something", or... ?

For my son, it was another child kissing him on the head when my child was about 6 months old, the child had eaten peanut butter for breakfast. His face started to swell, and my wife ran him to a local GP - and with wiping down and plenty of breast milk he was OK. A month or two later he was at a toddler party and rolled in a little hummus - and the same thing happened. We were already on the list for an allergy appointment, but they wouldn't see him until he was 18 months old - so we found a private hospital who would see him.

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In terms of 'cause' - we don't know, one or two other children of my sons generation in our family have food allergies, and an older brother thought he was allergic to fish though never tested.

We noticed the reaction after he had a round of antibiotics after he had infected eczema, quickly followed by my wife needing antibiotics which we are sure got to him through her milk, as he'd groan after breast feeding - before that we had plenty of nuts, sesame, milk and eggs in the house, without noticing an issue for him. But that is just a pet theory.

Sounds like obvious bullshit. His story I mean, not yours. If his allergy were as bad as he claimed he would be a bubble boy or dead. It's not as if all of society around him could be cleansed of peanut residue as the camp supposedly was. If he went anywhere public without a bubble then by his account he'd be dead.

He was extremely careful not to touch much, and after meeting his parents they lived in constant terror

Yeah, the anxiety with serious food allergies is real. I haven't had a reaction in nearly 22 years and I don't even remember what it feels like, but religiously avoiding a dangerous food from a young age you can have some long-term mental effects. I was super responsible about it even as a young kid, but now I'm a picky eater and occasionally have a mini anxiety episode after eating new foods.

That was my thought too. I am sure his allergy was serious, but this story is entering homeopathic levels of dilution and delusion.

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