#I once had to sprint and get my epipen so I could carry it around on stage for a performance

[badwolf109]

My ex-girlfriend, who is a licensed social worker, once fed me nuts. It was an accident, but not one that should’ve happened (everything was clearly labeled as “contains: cashews”). This was during the quarantine, so she wasn’t allowed to come back in the ER with me. On the drive home, I was trying to figure out how to delicately bring up my hurt that she’d handed me something with nuts. She clocked that I was being delicate because I didn’t want to make her feel worse than I’d assumed she already did and got mad at me.

“You're fine. It was a mistake—everyone makes those. I don't understand why you're making such a big deal out of this."

The likelihood that I will go into anaphylaxis and quickly die increases every time I'm exposes to nuts. I started having frequent panic attacks after this exposure. But she decided it would be a dealbreaker for her if her partner didn't trust her not to kill them accidentally, so the fight got dropped. (Luckily it was picked back up a couple weeks later after I told my brother what happened and he flipped out and validated that in fact it was extremely reasonable for me to be upset about what happened. Then I dumped her.)

She didn’t believe me about the severity of what happened because I didn’t go into anaphylaxis that time. That’s ableism. Straight up. From someone who was, supposedly, deeply invested in anti-oppression work and had multiple degrees in psychology.

Allergies are absolutely disabilities. And people are deeply, deeply shitty about them.

I wasn’t going to derail the disability pride month post for people with peanut allergies but in relation to that topic

I have never seen another allergy that has been so viscerally hated and mocked by people working in education like nut allergies. I’ve seen fellow teachers cringe that their classroom was the “nut free” classroom that year. Support staff that are trained and willfully don’t follow cross contamination protocol in the lunchroom because it’s too “tedious” or “time-consuming”. Full preschools + childcare centers that refuse to accommodate nut allergies. Schools where the only free lunch is a PB&J. Before/after school programs and summer programs whose food curriculum has nuts and doesn’t provide an alternative activity.

Allergy discrimination is so so insidious and prevalent. It’s happening behind their back and it is everything from the exposure joke to possibly causing someone to go into anaphylaxis from willful ignorance.

Also other parents in the classroom are guilty too. The “not my child not my problem” brain rot means that those lunchboxes are like bombs for airborne exposure allergies