Our Story
In October of 1996, my 10-month-old son had been suffering
months of reflux. The doctor had recently suggested adding more
solid foods as a way to combat his problem. A piece of bread
with a thin layer of peanut butter, cut into small squares,
seemed a logical option.
It was the noise that first got my attention.
 It wasn’t a cough or a wheeze, but a guttural sound, and I could
see he had spit out the food. I thought maybe the bread was too
dry, so I gave him a spoonful of cottage cheese, but a change
was occurring. He was still making the deep rasping sound, and
was beginning to scratch the outside of his throat. His face was
swelling, turning red and taking on a very moist complexion, and
I was scared.
I knew nothing about food allergies, but the story in the news a
few months back about a woman dying at a local restaurant after
having pesto sauce came to mind. I dialed our pediatrician, but
since it was a Saturday, I needed to leave a message, “Please
call as soon as you can.” I held my son and waited, but with
each passing minute his physical changes were getting worse. I
called my wife at work, and we agreed that we shouldn’t wait any
longer. Since we lived minutes from a hospital I rushed to the
emergency room with our little boy.
First liquid Benadryl, wait 5 minutes, then liquid prednisone,
and finally they were giving him a shot of epinephrine in his
thigh. It was then that his appearance came back to normal, but
his world, our world, would never be the same.
Our family was thrust into a world of constant vigilance.
Somehow a fuse was attached to our son that could go off at any
time. We had never thought about food allergies before, never
knew anybody who had them.
Knowledge was power and education was our ally. My wife and I
poured through all the available information to learn as much as
we could. The more we researched the more I learned that this
was a common problem and now a fast and growing problem. Our
awareness about food allergies and the impact it would have on
our daily living was just beginning.
As I read more studies and articles on this subject, I noticed a
common problem associated with food allergy reactions-fatalities
occurred when epinephrine was not readily available. The stories
about individuals with known food allergies, who owned
auto-injectable epinephrine yet experienced fatal outcomes
because of delays in getting and/or administering epinephrine
struck me and I saw a problem that needed a solution.
In other types of emergencies, there are consistencies for
response. Even the inexperienced could find a fire extinguisher
hanging on the wall easily in the event of a fire. An “AED” has
a clearly marked location and can be quickly located when a
heart stops. For the individual experiencing anaphylaxis, a
rescuer is presented with the challenge of finding the
epinephrine. Depending on the situation it could be in a
cupboard, a drawer, in a well labeled bag that is hidden in a
closet, or how about the locked medicine cabinet that only the
school nurse has the key to and she is at another school for
that time of the day.
The individual with life threatening
allergies may have purchased dozens of EpiPens®, but when the
window of opportunity is only 4 minutes to administer the life
saving epinephrine, you want someone to be able to find it fast.
The Epi-Ready was designed so that someone needing to find
emergency epinephrine, at home, at school, or at grandma’s house
can find it easily and quickly. When someone says, “Where is the EpiPen®”, it is as simple as saying, it is
“Right There”.
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