53-Year-Old Elaine Fraser, a teacher at York House School in Hertfordshire, England, collapsed at home after drinking ginger beer. She had no idea she had developed an adult-onset food allergy.
“It escalated unbelievably quickly,” Ms Fraser recalls. “My chest was concave trying to pull in breath.”
Luckily, staff at her school had been trained to recognize the symptoms of life-threatening anaphylaxis, and she realized she was in the throes of a severe reaction.
“I knew that my time was running out, and it was a cold, clear realization that I needed to make one very good call,” she said.
That call was to her school’s caretaker, Jason Jaekel, who lives two minutes from her home.
“You could tell from how she sounded it was a life-threatening situation,” said Mr Jaekel. “My first thought was to grab the [epinephrine auto-injector] kit from the school office and just get round as quick as I could.”
He rushed to her house and administered the auto-injector as he had been instructed during training.
“It was just a lightbulb moment,” he said. “The [auto-injector] went in, and I saw the light come back into her eyes. Her breathing steadied off, her eyes came back, she started to talk. I just felt an immediate relief.”
A law allowing schools in the UK to stock epinephrine enacted in 2017 saved her. The law was enacted after 13-year-old Karanbir Cheema, who had a severe milk allergy, suffered a fatal anaphylactic reaction after a schoolmate flicked a piece of cheese at him.
That law is optional and not funded by the government and only half of schools in the UK are estimated to participate.
There is no federal law in the US that mandates stock epinephrine in schools, leaving a patchwork of states and municipalities to address the issue.
Professor Adam Fox, chairman of the National Strategy for Allergy, told the BBC that the prevalence of food allergies was rising, leading to an increase in the number of severe reactions.
“After the home, the most common place for reactions is schools, followed by restaurants,” said Dr Fox.
Doctors still haven’t determined which ingredient in the ginger beer triggered Elaine’s reaction.
We are relieved Ms Fraser survived the ordeal and congratulate Mr Jaekel for taking the swift action necessary to save her life.
Epinephrine is the only drug that can halt and reverse the progression of anaphylaxis, but it must be administered quickly upon onset of symptoms to provide the best outcome.
If you have been prescribed epinephrine, always take two emergency devices along everywhere, every time, and be sure to administer the first when you first suspect anaphylaxis.
We need legislation to ensure that stock epinephrine — epinephrine that has been prescribed for general use in case of emergency — is available at every school and place of public accommodation, much like automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) are today.
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