Rosemary Allergy
We've known for awhile that our oldest gets a contact rash with fresh rosemary, so we've stayed away from using it as a seasoning. I discovered a couple of years ago that the ground chicken & turkey that we can get at our grocery store has rosemary added.
Found out the hard way that I had to read labels on meat. I mean, come on ~ who would think to read labels on "fresh" meats. Deli meats, yes. Hams, seasoned/cured meats, yes. But regular chicken and turkey? Once I saw that rosemary was added to these, they were cut out of the diet in attempts to get symptoms to calm down. We have not bought pre-ground meat since until recently. We added hamburger to the diet & it seems to be tolerated.
Eating dinner as a family is very important to me. A lot of times that means preparing 2 different meals ~ one for kiddo & one for us. We strive to mainstream dinner into one meal anytime we can. So, a few weeks ago my husband decided to make turkey burgers, got the pre-ground turkey & we all ate turkey burgers for dinner. Then kiddo had leftovers a couple times over the rest of the week. It took us until the 3rd meal of turkey burger to connect the out-of-the-blue allergy flare up to the turkey. You can believe as his parents we thoroughly beat ourselves up for missing this. But, in the long run we have to face the fact that we are human, under a lot of stress for various reasons and it was not intentional. The unfortunate part of this whole situation was the price our kiddo had to pay with their health.
The first night we ate the turkey burgers, they were up sick overnight, super congested. We thought head cold, allergies flared too much (typical). Very little sleep that night, fever by morning & complaining of tummy/gut pains & ear ache. Great we thought - ear infection. Day home. Gave Ibuprofen for pain/fever. By the next day they were back to normal. Seemed odd, but kids recover quicker, right.
Behavior was different the rest of the week like when reacting to things. 2nd dose of rosemary tainted burger for lunch one day. Just didn't pick up on it. Wouldn't settle enough for naps, overtired, emotional. Then the 3rd dose on a Friday night. Turned into another sleepless night for me & restless sleep for kiddo ~ too congested to breath, asthmatic cough, tummy ache & ear ache. While soothing overnight, my mind was puzzling over what on earth had gotten to him over the week. And like a thunderbolt in a clear sky it hit me ~ Ground turkey= rosemary! Damnation. Poor kid was sick because we weren't on our game. I told my husband in the morning & he felt like a complete heel for missing it. We knew there was a reason we only get his turkey from the health food store. I'd like to say with this lesson, we won't forget that again, ever!
