‘A kiss could kill him’
Parents of peanut-allergy sufferers go to extreme lengths to protect kids — but when is it too much?
Stone Cofini may not be allowed to date until he turns 16 next January, but his mother is already losing sleep over the prospect.
Dawn Cofini, a hairdresser from Nanuet, NY, is terrified that kissing another teen could prove deadly for her son. Stone, 15, is so allergic to peanuts, just inhaling dust from one could send him into anaphylactic shock — a life-threatening state in which airways narrow and oxygen is cut off.
“If a girl had previously eaten something fried in peanut oil [and then kissed Stone],” Dawn said, “it would really be dangerous.”
While her worry seems extreme, four years ago, 20-yearold Myriam Ducré-Lemay, of Quebec, died after accidentally receiving a peanut-laced kiss from her boyfriend.
Peanut allergies are up — patient numbers rose among children in the United States from 0.4 percent in 1997 to 1.4 percent in 2010, according to a study at Mount Sinai Hospital. And horror stories abound. According to a 2014 report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, some 2,458 people died in the United States between 1999 and 2010 due to anaphylaxis.
It’s scary enough to send some parents into vigilance hyperdrive, sometimes against doctors’ advice.
“You wave goodbye to your child in the morning wondering whether it’s the last time you’ll see them,” said Dawn, 53.
Kisses aren’t the only things that strike fear in the hearts of peanut-allergy parents. Travel is a big one, too.
Livingston, NJ, mom Lianne Mandelbaum recalled when her son, Joshua, now 11, was taunted by kids at the Denver airport in 2013 after they overheard talk of his allergy.
“They were eating peanuts at the gate and began throwing them and crushing them on the floor,” said Lianne. Increasingly uncomfortable, she moved seats and asked a United staffer to make an announce- ment on the aircraft that there was a child on board with a life-threatening nut allergy.
When a manager heard the story, he blurted out, “If you think he’s going to die, don’t get on the plane.”
“Joshua . . . got hysterical,” said Mandelbaum. “He was crying and begging: ‘Please don’t make me go on the plane!’ ” The situation was so dire, a family member ended up chartering a private plane.
It used to be that when Noah Hieu Do, 12, traveled by plane, he wore clothing that covered his skin head to toe, plus a particle mask. The peanut-allergy sufferer from Gilbert, Ariz., also sat on a bedsheet draped over the seat and floor beneath.
“We just couldn’t take any chances in case the previous occupant had eaten peanuts,” said his mom, Sara Do.
Recently, Noah developed a tolerance for peanuts thanks to a treatment called Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) which he began in January 2016. It involves children swallowing miniscule amounts of peanut flour, in increasing doses, under close medical supervision. (The practice is not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.)
“The last two flights [Noah] took to visit his dad in Texas, he traveled without his mask and gloves and he was so happy,” said Do. “OIT has been a miracle.”
Another OIT devotee is Austin, Texas, resident Anderson Billington, 9, whose Realtor mom, Amy, felt like “he was never safe.” She was particularly terrified after Anderson’s anaphylaxis at the age of 5 when he ate a grilled-cheese sandwich — possibly cut with a knife that had touched peanut butter — at a restaurant. He was saved with epinephrine, an injectable adrenaline that many allergy sufferers carry in the form of an EpiPen.
Despite this, Amy has been criticized for being too protective. “Society is very judgmental,” she said. “I’ve even had someone tell me: ‘You’re putting your anxiety on Anderson, making him scared,’ but it’s my job to watch out for him.”
Dr. David Stukus, a pediatric allergist in Columbus, Ohio, warned that parents can lose perspective and send kids into an unnecessary state of fear.
“There’s a lot of anxiety and self-imposed restrictions due to fear,” said Stukus. “These restrictions are . . . not [encouraged] by their allergists or the scientific community at large.”
He was disappointed by a recent survey that found that 26 percent of parents won’t their allow allergy-prone kids to have sleepovers away from home.
In a concession to the issue, nearly every private school in New York City is a nut-free environment. PS 150 in Tribeca is one of the few area public schools to go nut-free, but many others have adopted a “nut-aware” policy. At some nut-aware schools, kids who wish to eat peanut butter must sit at a separate “nut table” in the cafeteria.
As for Stone, his parents do not send him to a private, nutfree school near Nanuet because Dawn says, “Now that he’s an adolescent, we can’t watch over him 24/7. We’ve had to teach him to advocate for himself.”
Stone, who will start OIT in mid-May, said, “As I grow older, I know the ultimate responsibility is down to me.”