Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley

Author:Sandra Beasley [Beasley, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Social Science, Personal Memoirs, Health & Fitness, Disease & Health Issues, Allergies
ISBN: 9780307588135
Publisher: Broadway
Published: 2011-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Kiss of Death

Kiss of death for nut allergy girl,” proclaimed the headline in London’s Daily Telegraph on November 29, 2005. A fifteen-year-old girl living outside Quebec City had died after being admitted to the hospital for what was thought to be an anaphylactic reaction to peanuts. The reason? A passionate 3 a.m. kiss with her boyfriend—after he had eaten peanut butter. Her friends didn’t even know of her allergy until they pulled an EpiPen from her backpack. She had a MedicAlert bracelet, but she did not wear it.

“If peanuts are still in the mouth, or on the tongue or on the lips, they can cause a reaction,” said Dr. Karen Sigman, an allergy expert, in an interview for the Telegraph. “Teenagers with allergies have to let their friends know. If they are going to be dating somebody, then they have to tell the people they are close to that they are allergic to make sure they are not in contact with nuts or peanuts.”

There was a precedent for suspicion that kissing had been the culprit. In 2003, the Mayo Clinic Proceedings had published a case report on a twenty-year-old woman who had been admitted to a hospital with lip angioedema (swelling), nausea, wheezing, cramps, and a significant drop in blood pressure, all of which had happened immediately after receiving a good-night kiss from her boyfriend. The girl had a known allergy to crustaceans; the boy had eaten shrimp less than an hour earlier. She had recovered, but only after receiving several treatments including prednisone, nebulized albuterol, and intravenous epinephrine.

“Kissing, an ancient technique for expressing simple affection or erotic desire, has been recognized only recently as a vector for transmitting food allergens,” noted Dr. David P. Steensma, in his report. This was probably the only time Steensma has ever had to create a footnote citing William Cane’s The Art of Kissing.

As Canadian coroner Michel Miron would announce in the spring of 2006, the case of the fifteen-year-old victim turned out to be a bit more complicated. The girl had a history of severe asthma as well as allergies, and had been spending hours at a party with smokers; there were traces of marijuana in her system. These factors had contributed to an asthma attack, rather than a food reaction, and the subsequent cerebral anoxia (when oxygen cannot reach your brain) that actually led to her death. Her boyfriend’s snack of peanut butter and toast had been at 6 p.m., more than nine hours before they had kissed and she had begun complaining of shortness of breath.

“A study shows at the end of an hour, there is no allergen left in the saliva,” Miron said at a press conference, paraphrasing the known science in order to spare the boy a lifetime of guilt.

That story touched off an international wave of interest in “kissing reactions.” Mount Sinai School of Medicine staged an experiment in which volunteers ate two tablespoons of peanut butter in a sandwich. Subsequent interventions to neutralize the peanut allergens included brushing one’s teeth, chewing gum, and rinsing the mouth out with water.

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