Hail shower

Had to pick up Ruairidh from school this afternoon as he had an allergic reaction to a small chocolate bun that his pal had made in Home Economics class.

We've known he has been allergic to brazilnuts and hazelnuts for a few years now. Most of the time it's no problem as brazil nuts don't tend to crop up that often in any guise other than their natural form. Hazelnuts are harder to avoid as sometimes they creep into cakes and chocolate. Fortunately he doesn't like the taste so picks up their presence before it causes anything other than an itchy mouth.

Today was slightly different however as we're not sure what the trigger was and the symptoms were out of the ordinary. The usual itchy swollen mouth and lips were accompanied by swollen eyes and chest pains.

Although his symptoms were on the retreat by the time I picked him up (thanks to some antihistamines) I decided to pop into the doctors surgery just to get him checked out. The surgery staff were superb and the doc saw him within minutes. He gave Ruairidh a thorough check over and agreed that he was on the mend but decided to refer him to the hospital for observation for a few hours.

Luckily the hospital is just next door so we didn't have far to go. Another thorough check was followed by a couple of hours of sitting watching the swelling change. After a final check up he was discharged with the proviso that any change at all he went straight back. He's fine now. A bit tired and still looking as if he has been in the boxing ring but he's on the mend.

Now the detective work starts to find out exactly what was in the bun he reacted to. Suspicions fall on some sort of tree nut... hazelnut, walnut etc. being in the chocolate used but we may never find out.

Ruairidh takes all this in his stride, with very little panic or worry. Mostly he was annoyed that he couldn't see out of his eye to use his camera.