Her father is suing.
She has a nut allergy and ate baklava? Because someone told her it didn’t have nuts in it? IT’S MADE OF NUTS!!! Did she eat it with her eyes closed?
She didn’t have an epi pen? She didn’t go to the school nurse? Checked out of school and took a walk instead? What? What?
I don’t have allergies, so someone please help me make sense of this. How could a seventeen year old with nut allergies eat baklava and head to CVS for some Benadryl afterwards?
Isn’t that an unusually bad series of decisions? Darwin Award level? I mean, if it wasn’t this, she might have died trying to dry her hair in the microwave.
The family is probably left with crippling medical debt and needs someone to sue to get out of it.
This story is not just a tragic story about allergies, it is a story about the ongoing crime that is US for-profit healthcare.
Did you seriously make a post just to bad-mouth a kid who died?
You’re a piece of work.
Teen death, perfect casual conversation material
I don’t think I knew baklava had nuts in it back when I was 17.
An epi-pen costs $750. The nurse would have called an ambulance, and an ambulance ride and ER visit is going to be about $5000. Trying to avoid that kind of debt is not unreasonable.
She didn’t suffer from a nut allergy. She suffered from untreated Luigi-deficiency.
A man collapsed at a restaurant that my sister worked at. Paramedics came to transport him but he was adamant that they leave. Ten minutes later he collapsed again, but this time he died.
She didn’t suffer from a nut allergy. She suffered from untreated Luigi-deficiency.
Bingo
I’ve made baklava a lot in my life, even baklava ice cream. I never expected this amount of heated conversation about it 😬 This is something I am accustomed to, but I could see someone new to it not really understanding that these chopped up nuts that have been baked in a syrup are, in fact, nuts. Very unfortunate.
I agree! I love baklava. If someone never eats nuts, I can totally understand how they could eat baklava for the first time and not realize the “crunchy stuff” is made from nuts. They simply don’t have the experience to know what the taste and texture of nuts in syrup inside a flaky layered dessert like baklava are going to be like. The nuts are chopped up pretty small.
People are so quick to victim blame.
So, she was 17. 17 can be super smart in many ways, and sometimes a peak of certain types of creative genius. On the other hand, despite how worldly 17 can feel, most 17 year olds are missing a lot of wisdom you gain only through experience. So I cut her a lot of slack, and “dead” is a pretty serious consequence.
That said, if I’d lived for any number of years with an allergy that would absolutely be fatal without rapid response, even at 17 I would have been extremely cautious about what prepared products I put in my mouth. And I echo another comment: she had a sever but allergy and no Epipen? Were her parents utterly incompetent? I would make sure that’s the one thing she always had with her, and drill into her the consequences. You do not. Fuck. With. Nut. Allergies.
Maybe she developed it late; maybe it had never been a severe reaction before. There are a lot of reasons why this could have gone so wrong without stupidity being involved. But, damn. Food allergies can be really bad, and it seems like someone really fucked up here.
Ya, I live in the US (like this person), and there aren’t a lot of foods like this here. Nuts are usually a topper or entire, or are part of the name.
Not saying that this is why she decided on that sequence of events, but speaking as a former teenager who was dumb and awkward, I made lots of bone headed decisions too.
Of the things I can think of off the top of my head I almost died twice from exceptionally poor judgment at a bad time. I could have been a headline a decade ago just like this one. You only have to be unlucky once.
Well TIL that baklava is even a word, never heard of it before. Nice to know, given that I’m allergic to hazelnuts and walnuts.
Also, our school district didn’t even have a school nurse, it wasn’t until years after I graduated that I learned school nurses are a thing at practically all schools, except ours apparently.
Epi pen, or do you just go Benadryl? Because maybe allergy sufferers are a lot more casual about their health than I thought?
I have an epi pen. I’ve had an anaphylactic reaction and found out (because someone else (a medical professional) went to grab it from my car) that it was expired. I have them mailed to me but a doctor has to prescribe them and renew my prescription. So I would absolutely not count on this person having a usable EpiPen. That being said I’m also almost 40 and didn’t experience this kind of allergy when I was a teen. I certainly can’t speak for how a teen might react to having to change their eating habits and general habits to avoid certain foods. Not every kid is thinking clearly especially during a medical emergency.
Edit: I just read the article and I’m gonna say you’re not just wrong, you’re kind of an asshole.
Facts from an actual article about the situation:
The school where this happened had been previously notified that this student had an allergy.
The school supplied the food containing the nuts. They admit or witnesses corroborate that she specifically asked if the food had nuts in it and was told that it did not.
School staff were notified that she was having an allergic reaction and they gave her permission to go next door to a pharmacy to get medication to treat her symptoms. They did not call 911 and did not enact the emergency medical plan/policies in place for such a situation.
At the pharmacy the student’s condition worsened and she died from cardiac arrest brought on by the allergic reaction.
This is entirely on the school and the family has every right to sue.
This is what needed spelling out. Thank you.
Thankfully my allergies aren’t severe enough to need an epi-pen, but when I do happen to consume something I’m allergic to, apparently my intestines end up swelling and also feeling really itchy, from the inside…
Benadryl for about 4 to 6 days is usually sufficient for me as the food digests and passes, but of course the drowsy side effect sucks.
It’s easier for me to just try my best to avoid things I know I’m sensitive or allergic to in the first place, but yes sometimes mistakes have happened.
I do feel really bad for people with deadly level allergies, and if someone with allergies needs help reading ingredients or whatever, I’m more than glad to respect and help, as best as I know anyways.
im more confused as to how a near-adult with a life-threatening allergy drove to a pharmacy instead of immediately dialing 911
If you call 911, and get in the ambulance, congrats, you are now billed $1k to $3k depending on where you are.
If you can make it to a drug store and buy benadryll, you’re out maybe $30 bucks.
Something like 60% of Americans cannot afford a $1000 emergency expense.
If you can make it to a drug store and buy benadryll, you’re out maybe $30 bucks.
unless youre dead and wont have to pay any bill
Welcome to the risk-reward calculation that over half of America has to make unexpectedly, without warning, while in extreme pain.
She was 17.
Fuck you.
dude if i have a life threatening allergy, the ‘bill’ is irrelevant. ive actually had to make this decision.
fuck you
I have a life-threatening shellfish allergy and only have epipens that expired in 2016 due to cost, so ymmv ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
and if you had an emergency nowhere near your epis, you’d just go ahead and risk death just in case there was a big bill comin’ your way?
thats the decision everyone is glossin over here… death or bill
Humans are terrible at estimating risk. 17 year old humans generally more so.
I think that under reacting to situations like this is human nature. As an adult, I would definitely call 911 and deal with the repercussions after. As a child and teenager, my parents definitely just made me shotgun Benadryl and hopes for the best. I think judging a 17 year old based off of what most sober and rational adults would do isn’t fair.
I mean, I guess I’m stupid too because I didn’t know baklava was made of nuts. I don’t think it’s necessarily right to make fun of a teen who must have been anxious, embarrassed, and panicking.
… I didn’t know baklava was made of nuts.
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If you have a nut allergy, you probably should be a wee tad more aware of what things have or don’t have nuts.
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You should probably look at your food before you eat it as well. This is what baklava looks like; the nuts are rather obvious (and again, someone with a nut allergy should probably look even more closely than I would at food):
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Same, I’ve had baklava a few times before, never realized it was made of nuts until reading this.
Com’on. It’s literally just a stack of nuts, glued together with honey and filo.
You’re selling, but I ain’t buying.
???
I’ve only had it a few times, might be a situation where they called it baklava, but it wasn’t proper, nutty baklava?
Similar to all the American restaurants that claim to serve you Wagyu beef, when it is so uncommon, and so expensive to import, that they’re almost certainly not actually serving you Wagyu?
They can just take some other cut of beef and use some particular seasoning or oil or something, and 99% of Americans would have no idea.
I can’t even imagine a palate so off that you can’t taste nuts in something that’s made primarily of nuts. I guess this explains the people who taste the local noodle delicacy and think it’s just noodles in “peanut sauce”. (It’s sesame; radically different flavour and texture from peanut.)
If you have a nut allergy you probably have never tasted nuts and wouldn’t know that was what you were tasting
The baklava I’ve had was made primarily of pastry style bread, but uh I have had covid twice, lost taste and smell for a month or two each time, it came back eventually each time, but maybe I’ve got some permanent sensory loss from it.
Even before I had Covid, I didn’t even know Nutella was made from hazelnuts until like a year after I started using it …
I could tell it had a distinct taste, but it didn’t seem similar to walnuts or peanuts or almonds or cashews… ???
Wouldn’t the name help you identify nuts in Nutella?
Or, you know, reading the ingredients list (which again, if you’re nut-allergic, you should be doing religiously).
Its pronounced Noo Tel Ah, not Nut El Ah, at least where I’m from.
Also I am not allergic to nuts, I don’t seem to have any food allergies or intolerances.
Do… do you read the ingredients list of every single food you eat?
How would you even do that at a restaurant? They often list common allergies, but not every ingredient.
I get that if you’re working on making your diet more healthy, or avoiding allergies, this makes a lot more sense to do, but most other people probably do not do that.
Do… do you read the ingredients list of every single food you eat?
If I had a lethal food sensitivity YES I WOULD!
Hell, I have a minor sensitivity to lactose and I will check things that might have milk or such. Not religiously, because my cost if I slip up is bloating and mild discomfort. But if it would kill me? HELL YES!
I’ll read the ingredients on many things first, just because I can. It’s just a good practice if you even have the slightest bit of interest in food chemistry.
The fuck is the name supposed to mean? Is Viagra just water from Niagara Falls? Is Tylenol made from lentils?
Ingredients list, sure, but don’t lead with naming. I would expect Nutella starts with Nu (new), not Nut which isn’t how it’s pronounced.
Q1. Do you have a nut allergy? I think it makes you somewhat more aware.
Q2. Have you seen baklava?
It’s just nuts and filo.
Perhaps I could offer some perspective, since I do have a peanut and pistachio allergy. First of all, many people have allergies to specific nuts but not all nuts. Peanuts are actually legumes, and the allergy is to a specific protein. I eat almonds almost daily. I enjoy walnuts and pecans, macadamia nuts, etc. Some people are allergic to all of these nuts, but in my experience that’s actually fairly rare.
Baklava is traditionally made with walnuts. If you don’t have an allergy to walnuts and you’re sure it’s made just just walnuts and not some other nut you’re allergic to, then it’s not unreasonable to eat it.
Sadly, lots of nuts are labeled one nut but actually contain a mixture of nuts. One Christmas my aunt poisoned me with pecans in a salad. When I started having an anaphylactic reaction she checked the can which said in small print that it was 80% pecan 20% mixed nuts including peanut, pistachio, cashew, almond, and others. I spent Christmas in the ER.
Enjoying this delicious treat without an allergy kit is unwise. Some schools are crazy about kids having medication, but I think that’s ridiculous. I have all my allergy medication and syringes in a glasses case and I take it everywhere. I have one in my backpack, one in my car, one in my office, they’re everywhere. When you have a serious allergy like this, you should always know where to find it without having to think (every minute counts) and you should always have a bottle of water or know how to get water in an emergency to swallow meds. (When I board a plane, I always buy a bottle of water after I get through security.)
As for leaving school to get to a pharmacy if she didn’t have meds, I say smart. It’s criminal that the school doesn’t have an allergy kit. But sometimes you need to take matters into your own hands and be your own advocate. I’ve frequently made the call that I cannot wait for an ambulance to take me to a hospital, I need to drive myself to the closest ER because I can get there faster–even without lights and sirens–than waiting for an ambulance to drive essentially twice the distance. I know this is controversial but I’d rather die controlling my own destiny.
As for why she did not take this seriously, I can say that I’ve had lots of reactions with different levels of severity. Sometimes you spit the thing out right away without ingesting it. The reaction might be slower in this case, but can still be fatal. She probably thought she had more time. Once the allergin contacts a mucous membrane you’re toast. It’s not like you can wash your mouth out with soap and water–yes, I’ve actually tried that–doesn’t do shit. Once time I had peanut butter on my hands (unwittingly) and wiped my eyes. Full blown reaction just from touching my eye lids with peanut butter residue. That was a wild incident because I had no idea what was happening. Found out some kids had a birthday party at the location earlier in the day and they had PB&J sandwiches. Evidently they didn’t clean up too well.
It can be a tough thing to live with, but the person with the allergy often feels a lot of guilt for causing inconvenience for everybody around them. I hate being that guy with the peanut allergy. And nothing is worse than boarding a plane where people are already annoyed that they don’t serve peanuts and having to tell somebody in my row that I have a severe allergy and I’d really appreciate if they didn’t eat their Reeses cups and peanut bars. I do remind them that it probably beats the disruption of an emergency landing in a different city, though.
I feel for all involved. Anyway, hope that helps. Just my perspective.
I have one in my backpack, one in my car, one in my office, they’re everywhere.
Last I checked, they are $200, either weren’t covered by insurance or that was the co-pay, and expire after 6 months. We couldn’t even afford to keep one at school and one at home, much less have one everywhere.
Everything else you say makes sense to me, but not that.
If you’re talking about Epipen, they’re even more expensive than that, but I use epinephrine ampules that cost about $1 and draw it up myself if I need to use it. People will give you funny looks since you have syringes, but they do fine in the glasses case. The Epipen people will tell you that’s too complicated in an emergency but it’s actually really easy once you’re trained to do it. It also allows one to adjust the dose in an emergency–my dose is different than that of a child. My grandmother was a diabetic and had to inject herself with insulin all the time when I was growing up. If she could manage to do that anybody could.
You sound like you take things quite seriously, as well you should. I’m sure there’s a level of shame, and perhaps that’s a bigger deal with a teen. I really don’t blame her too much, although I do think it’s incautious of anyone to trust an unknown person’s word with a deadly food item.
I think I acknowledged that. People also take calculated risk every day. It’s really hard to avoid nuts even when you’re not intending on taking that risk. Baklava is pretty obviously nutty, but these days product labeling pretty much always says may contain peanuts for liability reasons, even when it definitely doesn’t contain peanuts. You’re left not knowing what actually contains peanuts and what doesn’t. You become desensitized to taking a chance. I once ordered a dessert at a restaurant and asked the waiter to check if it had peanuts, he came back and said it did not. I got the dessert, started eating it, mouth started swelling up, asked the waiter to check again, he came back and said there are definitely no peanuts but the chocolate mousse what peanut butter whipped chocolate mousse. So people are also just fucking stupid, can’t trust anyone to have any common sense anymore.
it’s incautious of anyone to trust an unknown person’s word with a deadly food item
Even a known person’s word. People fuck up. Someone who doesn’t have a peanut allergy doesn’t know that even TRACES of peanut can kill people who have the allergy. So they’ll read “may contain traces of peanuts” and not understand.
When you have a lethal allergy you need to be prepared for good-natured ignorance and stupidity. And for a minor, it is on the parents that she wasn’t prepared.
It’s just nuts and filo.
Be fair. It’s also honey. Maybe the honey concealed the pistachios. Somehow.
I don’t have a nut allergy. I have seen baklava. I didn’t realize that the filling was nuts. It is not at all obvious to me visually.
She was young and asked what it was and what was in it. Someone told her the incorrectly that it was made without nuts. She trusted the individual who did so.
I believe there was a time when you first learned what baklava is. You are not born innately knowing. Considering she was only 17 and also living in the US, I don’t think it’s odd that she hadn’t heard of it or come across it yet.
If I had a nut allergy and picked up baklava, I would know not to eat it. It’s really obvious. What else could that be inside?
I’ve eaten a lot of baklava, and aside from tasting the walnuts and expecting they are an ingredient, I’d have had no idea. There is no crunchiness. It tastes like pastry and maple syrup, maybe brown sugar more than anything else.
Now imagine you’ve never tasted walnuts because you can’t eat them. Are you sure you’d know what was inside?
That’s a lot of “if” statements that are being judgey of someone now dead. Be better.
Imagine what kind of life someone has, that they need to punch down on a dead child who trusted authority figures.
Believe it or not there are a lot of foods on the planet that can be made of a lot of different things. Someone literally told her that it wasn’t made of nuts when she took it, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility for her to think that it must be some other ingredient.
Get off your high horse and stop jacking off to the unfortunate death of a literal child who was told the wrong thing.
It literally tastes like huts and honeyz because that’s 2 of the 3 ingredients. As soon as it touches your tongue it’s clear it’s made of nuts.
Whether she was told something wrong or not, there’s no reason a 17 year old should be completely ignorant of their deadly allergy, and the steps to take in response. They’re basically an adult, we’re not talking about a little child here.
Old enough to drink alcohol?
Do you think someone who has a “deadly allergy” knows what their allergen tastes like?
The people I know with nut allergies 100% know what other nuts taste like and are confident they can extrapolate to figure out if they’re given what they can’t have. They also all carry epi-pens because their nut allergies are severe. A couple have accidentally had that particular nut, usually that’s how they found out they were allergic in the first place. So maybe not all, but my personal sample size of 4 has a 100% rate of knowing what their issue is and how to identify it. And that’s not including acquaintances I don’t know personally but know stories from.
Do you not understand how it must be? Imagine most everybody has no trouble with strychnine and consumes it casually. You, on the other hand, die from it.
“Hey stranger, any strychnine in this?”
“Nope.”
“Om-nom-nom!”
Not me! Or if I was gonna live like that, I’d SURE AS HELL have the antidote in my possession.
Doesn’t seem strange to me at all. This blithely waltzing through landmines I’m hearing advocated seems, no pun intended, nuts.
Why is it so important for you for it to be her fault and only hers? If it’s so obvious that it’s made of nuts why would the person who gave it to her say it wasn’t? If it’s so stupid to leave that no rational human being would ever consider it why would the school let her do it?
You’re talking about a minor. If it was so stupid for her to do this stuff, then every other person and adult involved was at least as stupid or worse.
Like, yeah, if you have a life threatening allergy you should be appropriately cautious. Schools also should never have “just let them leave” to be anywhere near their list of medical emergency responses to begin with. And you shouldn’t feed someone with food allergies something if you aren’t positive what the ingredients are. Multiple people can do things wrong in a way that results in someone’s death.
It isn’t her fault at all, I agree. She was a teenager, and teenagers are quite literally ignorant. They lack the life experience necessary to make wiser choices.
But where were the parents in all this? If I had a child with a life-threatening allergy, I GUARANTEE you that child would be carrying an epi-pen (or at least Benadryl if money is tight) 24×7. I’d also have a card made with strict steps to follow should there be accidental exposure, with instructions for my child on one side and instructions for third-parties on the other. (I’d also make damned sure that they learn to recognize chopped nuts in food where they’re highly visible! It’s ludicrous to look at a baklava and ask “are there nuts in this” when there’s very visible chopped nuts in them. Again the parents failed their daughter and she paid the price for it.)
The parents, as far as I’m concerned, failed their daughter and are now trying to point fingers at the school board when it was their lackadaisical handling that led to their daughter’s death.
