any advice is appreciated. The story.
I'm allergic to strawberries. If they touch me, I get hives in a diameter of about 20 inches around the spot I was touched. If I am kissed by someone who ate them, my face swells up. If I swallow even a little bit, I stop breathing. I can usually smell them for great distances, and I avoid any pink desserts. But I can't smell if someone's been eating them. It doesn't stay on their breath, even though traces of the juice stay around the mouth and hands for a while.
Strawberries are in EVERYTHING for kids, at least here in the U.S. We're going to get an allergy test for DD because my allergy is so bad. My questions for this board are:
If my daughter is not allergic, how do I communicate to her that she can't touch me without washing thoroughly and can't kiss me if she's recently had strawberries or anything with natural strawberry flavor?
If she is allergic, how do I get her to remember that she can't have any, and she can't read yet so she can't look at the packages, and she can't talk well yet so she can't tell anyone? How do I make sure that carers don't accidentally kill her or me?
I am in a bit of panic mode because it just hit me that we're at this point that we HAVE to deal with it, since she's going to playgroups where food is consumed and traded and not always washed off. And I'm not ready to try to explain to her the concept of "mommy or you could die".