Monday, April 5, 2010

Give Your Food Allergy Essentials a Spring Update!

As the school year winds down, now is a great time to check your food allergy medications, bracelets and other gear to make sure that everything is up to date and current. For example, I came across one of my daughter's many EpiPens only to find that it expires next month. Several others don't expire until next fall, but I definitely don't want any duds laying around.

What about you? For those of you with kids in school or daycare, now is a great time to check the dates of your child's prescriptions (if you don't have them filed away already), see if they're getting low on anything (asthma inhalers or other medications for example) and to make sure that medical I.D. allergy bracelets still fit.

Also, since summer is coming, now is a great time to get those all-important medical forms filled out by your allergist. Allergists will be super-busy for the next few months, so get your forms in early.

Some of you have probably heard of the Center for Anaphylactic Support--they are a great group that offers EpiPen video tutorials as well as a FREE EpiPen renewal reminder service. Check the site to find out more--it's also a great site for friends and relatives who want to learn more about severe allergies.

If your child has outgrown their Medical I.D. bracelet (either mentally or physically), check out some new designs on the Medic Alert website. The Kid Smart program comes with a discount for children 17 and under. New Medic Alert jewelry include girly beading (for young fashionistas) and shoe tags that boys may prefer to wear. (On a side note, you'll also see adorable Alexis Fellows, daughter of mom Michele who runs the fabulous dairy, egg and nut-free bakery Sweet Alexis, when you click on the site!)

Spring updates can be a chore, but don't forget to do a spring sweep of your child's allergy needs. Anything I forgot to mention? Share your spring updates with us!

4 comments:

smilinggreenmom said...

Thank you so much for the great reminders and links! Very important stuff :)

Rhonda Lewis said...

Hi Jenny: I wanted to share this site too which is included in this article. http://www.allergysense.com/blog/2010/01/26/register-your-epinephrine-devices-get-notified-of-expiry-dates/

Its a great site where you can enter all of your prescrptions and medical info including epipens and the site will send you emails when they expire. I really love this site as I have so many epipens I can specify when I register the devices which one has which expir.

Elizabeth Goldenberg said...

I thought I'd pass this on to your Canadian readers, where children between 4 and 14 years old are entitled to a MedicAlert I.D. and membership free of charge through the No Child Without program. There are 5077 Canadian schools participating. To see if your child's school is participating, visit nochildwithout.ca. Thank you for posting these important reminders.

Jenny said...

Thanks everyone and also Elizabeth for the link for Canadians. What a wonderful service--our allergist just reminded us about keeping our daughter's medic alert bracelet on at all times.