What I'm about to discuss is a matter of life and death. 

I am allergic to peanuts.  Yes, the bad kind of allergic where I can have anaphylactic reactions and die from ingesting just a small amount.  Yes, this means I grew up without peanut butter.  This is no tragedy to me.

For me, it's a part of life.  I carry an epipen with me everywhere I go.  I don't eat food when I can't read the package or speak with confidence to the person who made it.  I don't eat jam or jelly at other people's houses (most of it will be cross-contaminated from knife-sharing during sandwich-making -- I learned this as a kid the hard way).  I have had friends act annoyed or hurt when I refuse to eat the food they offer me.  I don't let it bother me.  My life is more important to me than sparing the feelings of the oversensitive. 

I very rarely eat out.  When I do eat out, I am an annoying customer.  I ask questions about everything.  I ask the same questions over and over again.  I'm not trying to be annoying, neither am I doubting the faculties of the person I'm speaking to, I just know that when it's not your life on the line, you're not going to be as diligent as I am.  After all, my life, quite literally, is.

Last weekend, I received a terrifying reminder of this reality.  My best friend had recently started working as a waitress at a new upscale tapas restaurant which had been getting great local reviews.  As I said, I rarely eat out, and the Asian theme of this restaurant did cause me to pause, since peanuts are a prevalent ingredient in Chinese cuisine.  But since this was a nice restaurant to which I had a personal connection (my friend assured me I could speak to the owner and head chef directly before ordering), I decided it would be safe to stop by and try a dish or two.

The restaurant was clean and decorated in a modern style.  It was one of those new, trendy, too-hip-to-use-the-word-fusion places where the head chef is also the owner.  The chef/owner and the manager both greeted me personally when they found out their waitress was my friend.  I explained my allergy to them an they assured me it was no problem to keep my meal nut free.  "I created all the recipes, and I know what I put nuts in," the owner assured me. 

When I made my selections, my friend brought the list to the owner and he okayed everything, positive there was nothing to be worried about.

My first dish had a suspicious-looking dressing drizzled across it.  Even though I had already been assured repeatedly that everything I ordered was peanut-free, experience has taught me it never hurts to be redundant in these matters.  "There're no peanuts in this dressing, right?" I asked again.

"No, no," stated the owner.  "It's just sesame.  I make it myself."

I started to eat the salad with as much confidence as I start to eat anything I didn't make with my own two hands.  The food was creative and very well prepared, but after about five minutes.  I noticed a familiar tickling sensation in the back of my throat.

Trying not to panic, I called my friend over.  "Are you sure there's no nuts in this?" I asked.

"The owner promised me there's not," she said, but when she saw the worry on my face, she rushed to call him over.

The owner and the manager came over and assured me again the dish was peanut-free.  "It's only sesame paste," the owner told me.  "You're not allergic to sesame seeds, right?"

Half the restaurant staff was standing around me at this point telling me, in essence, that I wasn't feeling what I was feeling.  When you're trying to decide whether to run to the bathroom and inject yourself with epinephrine, this is the second-worst experience in the world.

The worst experience in the world is struggling to breathe in the passenger seat after you've injected yourself with epinephrine and realized it didn't do anything to mollify the anaphylaxis while your friend is driving down the left side of the road to get you to the hospital before your throat closes completely and your heart stops. 

In the emergency room I was IV'd, EKG'd, and injected.  My blood pressure dropped so low that for a while they were worried I would have a heart attack.  I was admitted overnight with an IV and a heart monitor.  Several doctors and nurses stopped in to let me know I was lucky to be alive.

My friend later told me that while I had been in the bathroom administering my epipen, the owner had checked the packaging of the sesame paste he had used to make the dressing, and sure enough, peanuts were the second ingredient.  This was not a vague warning of "processed in a facility which also may contain peanuts," this was the second freaking ingredient after sesame seeds in the sesame paste. 

Fortunately, my parents taught me exactly what to do in that situation, so I was able to save myself by taking my medicine and rushing to the ER.  If that hadn't been the case, you probably wouldn't be reading this entry right now.

And all because the restaurant owner wouldn't check a package of sesame paste.

Peanut allergies have been in the news a lot in the past ten years.  The generation below mine has apparently been walloped with a peanut allergy epidemic.  Peanuts have been banned from school campuses, and in-class birthday parties with cupcakes and cookies are a thing of the past.

Still, many who don't deal with these allergies on a personal level tend to roll their eyes at these regulations.  For most people, it's hard to believe that something that can be so nourishing and tasty (and often nostalgic and comforting - think PB&J) can be literal poison for someone else.  There are also people who may have a technical peanut allergy with only minor reactions such as hives, who go around saying things like "I can eat a small amount and it's okay."  For me, this is not an option.  One nibble of a peanut butter cookie could cause me to go into anaphylactic shock and die. 

But because of all the conflicting information (as well as real variations in type and severity), many non-allergic people still view these allergies as something minor, exaggerated, psychosomatic, or even fabricated to garner attention.  I know, because the fact of my allergy has been met with each one of these attitudes more times than I can count, as recently as this week.

I'm not going to name the restaurant.  The goal of this entry is not to attack an individual chef or establishment.  I merely want to relate my first-hand experience as an example to whoever reads this of why it really is that important to know what you're feeding people, whether you own a restaurant or not, especially if they let you know they have a food allergy. It's a weird and scary world out there when an innocent legume that can nourish one person can react like arsenic in the belly of another.  We all need to look out for one another.  Sometimes it can be as easy as reading the label on a package.