Boy’s nut allergy death offers warning

West Palm boy with asthma dies after taking bite of coffee cake containing walnuts.

Oakley Debbs had a deadly combination: a severe allergy to nuts and acute asthma. And in a moment when the 11-year-old’s guard was down over the Thanksgiving holiday, a bite of coffee cake was all it took to fatally undo years of caution.

What torments his parents more than a week later is that they thought they had stopped the allergic reaction in its tracks.

That Wednesday evening, when Oakley’s lip began to swell, they gave him Benadryl, a drugstore remedy that counters the symptoms. It was more than an hour later, after Oakley had played, showered and gone to bed, that he complained his tummy hurt. He vomited, felt no better even as his mom, Merrill Debbs, lay beside him rubbing his belly. He vomited again.

Believing her son was on the brink of an asthma attack, she ran for that medication, and her husband, Robert Debbs, stepped in.

Oakley Debbs’ heart stopped in a hospital room at 1:55 a.m. Saturday. But, says Robert, “He died in my arms Wednesday night when he was convulsing. He just went limp.”

Though paramedics revived Oakley’s body, the fifth- grader with boundless

CONTRIBUTED Oakley Debbs, 11, who had a severe nut allergy as well as asthma, died after taking a bite of coffee cake that he did not know was made with walnuts.