Food Allergy Blogger's Conference 2014!

I'm thrilled to attend the Food Allergy Blogger's Conference (#FABlogCon) for the 2nd year in a row! Last year was truly a life-changing event for me, catalyzing many lasting, meaningful relationships across our food allergy community. The mutual understanding, support, and camaraderie of virtual friends meeting face-to-face was overwhelming in the best way possible for an introvert like me!

Look for me on Saturday morning at the break-out session on evidence-based blogging with Veronica LaFemina and Anna Luke from Food Allergy Research and Education (aka, FARE) and Henry Ehrlich, editor of Asthma Allergies Children and author of Food Allergies: Traditional Chinese Medicine, Western Science, and a Search for a Cure.

We hope to give lots of great advice and useful tips on blogging with integrity about food allergy science and discovery! I'll be leading the discussion on honest headlines and examining your personal bias. After all, how many times have you been frustrated by a misleading headline when it comes to food allergy research?!

If you can't make it, then please, please, please find me later and introduce yourself. I'm looking forward to meeting friends new and old (I'll be sure to give you one of my "business" post cards straight from Oregon!).

AND, if you can't make it to the conference, please follow along virtually on Twitter using the hashtag #FABlogCon. Selena at Amazing and Atopic did a wonderful job of explaining and providing a view of the Twitter feed, no Twitter account required!

See you soon!

My post on FABlogCon 2013

You're prepared for an allergy emergency, but is your child?

Be prepared. It’s a mantra in our house. I thought I was prepared, I thought my 6 year old son was prepared. He was not, and therefore, I was not. Let me explain…

There are “2 pillars” to managing food allergies – prevent reactions and prepare to respond to the emergency (see AllergyHome’s great educational materials). We’ve had a few years to “prepare” ourselves to respond to a food allergy emergency should it arise. I thought I was “prepared” for when to use the epinephrine autoinjector (e.g. EpiPen, Auvi-Q), and I would not hesitate to use it. As an allergy parent, you go through all the scenarios, you have nightmares about scenarios, you hear of other family’s scenarios, and every time, you think about how you would respond in that scenario.

Image used with permission by AllergyHome.org

My "hot" new asthma piece at Asthma Allergies Children!

I'm no stranger to my enthusiasm for Asthma Allergies Children as a source of great information and thought-provoking original pieces on allergic disorders. 

I'm delighted to share my new piece  - Allergic Asthma: When Organ Systems Communicate, We Might Not Always Like What They Have to Say.

You'll just have to go read the piece to find out why it's so "hot!"

"Large Cayenne" by André Karwath aka Aka - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Large_Cayenne.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Large_Cayenne.jpg