peanut butter emergency

we had a peanut butter emergency at target today. rianne, silla, my mom, reese and i went there to see if there were any good black friday deals. usually before i put reese into a shopping cart i check to make sure there's no trash or anything inside. i did that when we got there, but since our cart was so noisy, we abandoned it in the middle of the store and traded it for another random cart nearby. i didn't even think to inspect that one. i left to go check something out in another part of the store, and a couple minutes after i caught back up with my mom and reese she said, "look at him. he's busy." he was laying on his stomach really concentrating on something. i checked to see what he was looking at and realized he was eating something! there was a candy wedged into the metal grate of the cart.. and he had been picking at it with his finger nail, eating as much as he could. i looked closer and realized that it was A FREAKING REESE'S PEANUT BUTTER CUP! i panicked. he had already gotten through the chocolate and i caught him with peanut butter under his nail. his breath smelled like peanut butter, too. i told him to open his mouth and he had the foil wrapper inside. i ran to the bathroom to clean his hands and mouth with soap. when i grabbed his wrist to rinse off his hands, his skin turned bright red. rianne and silla came to see if he was okay and he was already starting to get hives around his lips. i ran to the pharmacy to buy benadryl. the check out lines were super long so i was kind of yelling at the pharmacists asking if i could pay right there. when the rest of the girls met us there i was in full panic mode. i opened the box and realized there was no dropper inside, and there was no way i would able to give reese the proper dosage using just the cup that was provided. i asked the two pharmacists if there was a dropper i could purchase and they said they could give me one for free. i started crying and they started to realize the urgency of the situation. i said, "he's having an allergic reaction!" and one of them looked at me like i was crazy and said, "ER. right now." i told her that this was what i was instructed to do, and so i wanted to do it first. luckily reese thought the medicine was candy and he happily ate it up. my mom left with us and we headed straight to urgent care. luckily by the time we got there the hives were gone and, aside from red eyes, he appeared to be fine. we were admitted right away and everything turned out to be a-ok! the doctor said that we did exactly what we needed to do, and so thank GOD that the benadryl was enough. i also have to keep giving him doses for the next 48 hours.

i don't know exactly how much peanut butter he actually ate. in hindsight i wish we would've kept the candy so we could inspect it, but at the time we just wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible! it was just so scary because we haven't even met with his allergist yet (his appointment is not until this coming tuesday) and so i was not mentally prepared to deal with a potential reaction without even knowing much of about the severity of his allergy yet. all i could think was, "am i seriously going to have to use the epi-pen here at target?!" i'm so glad it never got to that point. as scary as it was, i'm so thankful that everything ended up being okay.

crazy baby!! anthony said, "at least he can say that he tried his candy afterall!"