Pharmacies and freesamples
Don't let the title confuse you, they are unrelated, but happened on the same day.
Is it a good thing when I walk up to the pharmacy window, and the pharmacy tech immediately turns around and grabs my refill out of the box- without me saying anything other than 'good morning?' Is that a good or bad thing that they know me? We have 5 family members who get prescriptions filled there, and it's not like it's a little corner pharmacy. It's inside a national chain store, so they have plenty of patients.
Of course, all 5 of us have allergies, and 4 of the 5 of us have asthma. But I didn't realize we were going in for refills THAT often. I guess it's a good thing that they know us, and can take care of us....
Later that day, we were at a warehouse store loading up on groceries. I managed to pry Kitty and Son #2 off the computer to accompany me. Lucky them, it was free sample day. I glanced at all the samples, none of them seemed a problem. But I turned around to say something to one of the kids, and noticed Son #2 was about to put a piece of a granola bar/power bar in his mouth. Think slow motion-me waving my arms and running towards him, fixated on the sample nearing his mouth, yelling 'nooooooooooo!' He was a little shocked, and quickly pulled the sample down from his mouth. I panted, 'did you check for tree nuts?' We examined the bar, but couldn't tell. We went back to the vender, but she didn't know what was in the sample. I snatched the box to read the label, and sure enough-there was a tree nut allergy warning.
That was a close call, Son #2 is usually good at checking for tree nuts. It's surprising how many places they show up.
That's the one scary thing about allergies and asthma, you can never let your guard down. I haven't had to use the Epi Pen yet, the time one of the kids had an anaphylactic reaction, we were only a block away from Asthma Doctor.
People laugh when I say my goal in life is to keep my kids alive, but if you have kids with food and other allergies, and asthma, you know what it's like. 12 hospitalizations for asthma have been 12 too many. No wonder I have gray hairs....