Twinject Training

Yesterday I had an appointment with our school Nurse. It was suggested that I come in to train the staff how to use my son's "twinject pen". It is much like an "Epipen" but has two doses of Epinephrine rather than one. I had called our allergist's office the day prior. It was offered to me to have the "Twinject" Rep come and speak to our school staff. How cool that would be! Ok sure fine with me, how about tomorrow (meaning yesterday) at 2:30? No problem, well that was great. I was really going to raise awareness about life threatening food allergies now!
Our meeting yesterday went great. In fact my babysitter came along as well. My daughter was present as well as my son's teacher and the Nurse's office staff. Two gentleman came rather than one. They showed us a quick DVD, informed us of the difference between the Epipen and the Twinject, gave us coupons to get free Twinject pens, with a prescription of course..... gave everyone training using a demo pen. One of the people present made the comment to my son that "this is all for you!" Don't you feel special kind of thing. It was great and I'm feeling much more confident knowing that I have raised some awareness. I feel my son will be safe in his school. We all made the comment that we hope never to have to use the product. The reps said yes we hope our product will be one that you dispose of most, unused. Thankfully we've never had a situation that I have had to use it!
When my son was just under 2 years old he had his first taste of cashews. His lips look a little red, sadly I attributed it to the salt. I had no idea what a food allergy looked like. When his lip started blowing up to proportions I thought it was incapable I immediately called for help. We had paramedics at our home in a matter of minutes. He then developed hives. At that time his hair was very blond and his little body turned so red up against that blond hair it looked extreme. He was transported to the hospital and given epinephrine in transit. Once there we had a team of medical personnel surrounding him. His symptoms began to subside, but were still present. We were told he would need to be hospitalized over night so that they could keep watch over him. The hospital he'd been transported to could not accept children over night. The nearest hospital was full. The next option was to air lift him to the next major city. It was only 30 minutes away, but this was during rush hour. So we were airlifted and stayed overnight. I had quite a sleepless night that night keeping watch, I had never experienced anything quite like this before. My husband brought our daughter home and stayed with her that night. I watched my son's symptoms disappear overnight. We then became more educated about food allergies and went in for skin testing. He in fact was allergic to tree nuts. If he were to ingest them it could cause an anaphylaxis reaction which is exactly what he had. Now every year we go to the Allergist to be retested in hopes he'll out grown it. Each year the degree of sensitivity seems to change. We have done "food challenges" where a tiny amount of the allergen is given in a controlled situation. Usually this involves spending many hours in the Doctors office. I'm thankful that she is so attentive to our situation though. If you'd like more info. about "Twinject" you can click on the title of my post and you will be linked to the website.