The Cake of Pure Evil

We were maybe going to have some play time with Starfruit & Cutiebug today but, after 2 days in a row without a nap, Wee Laddie woke up at 6 am. Ugh. And since he was in a time-out before 8:30, I decided this was not such a good day to try it.

We went to meet Guitarman for lunch (he was on shift the last 2 days so couldn’t eat with us). Wee Laddie was happily eating his kuppelkuchen (some kind of German cake) when he suddenly announced he didn’t like it and wasn’t going to eat it. Huh?? Then he started acting a little weird, like he had a bad taste in his mouth or something. Then he’d put his hands over his ears, then out to the side and shake them. We tried to get him to eat/drink something to get rid of the taste he didn’t like but that didn’t seem to work. Then his face started turning red and he got some welts on his chin & cheeks. Aha, allergy of some kind. Then he puked.

So while Guitarman went & helped him rinse his mouth out, I went to find out what was in the cake so that we can avoid it in future. Took a little while ‘cause they get their cakes at a local bakery so they were calling to find out but could only get the answering machine. Their baker said it was chocolate Bisquick and buttercream, which sounds so innocuous (and like something Wee Laddie had likely had before) but then they said also hazelnuts and marzipan. He may have had almond before but I don’t think he’s ever had hazelnuts. I’ll have to ask the pediatrician about it when we get back. I’d like to actually know if he’s allergic, but that seems best tested at the doctor’s office in case anything goes wrong.

It was a little scary, as I kept worrying about his tongue swelling up or him having an anaphylactic reaction. (*see update below) He had one allergic reaction to something once before but I don’t remember the circumstances... and I think we decided it was a contact allergy.

Anyway, I thought we’d best hang out on base in case we needed to head over to the clinic, so we went to the ACS (Army Community Services... they're the ones I've been facilitating the sign language class through) offices to say our goodbyes. Wee Laddie seemed to get back to his normal self pretty quickly. So we chit-chatted with our friends over there for a bit & took a few photos to remember people by. I figure that’ll help Wee Laddie adjust since the photos of people from back home seemed to help him so much while we’ve been here.

*Update: Turns out that this reaction actually was an anaphylactic reaction. Contrary to the popular notion that it always involves compromised breathing, anaphylaxis simply means that it's a severe allergic reaction, often involving more than one body system. And since he had vomiting (GI) and hives (skin reaction), that means two systems. We are lucky that the reaction didn't get any worse. The ones that come on fast like that sometimes get dangerous very quickly.