Children with allergies are not hypocritical, please don’t make fun of their lives.

Some time ago, a post about allergies went viral on Weibo, which refreshed my understanding of allergies. The post tells the story of a little American boy who has food allergies. He is the child in the picture below. His name is Christopher Cataldo, who is 6 years old this year. Since birth, he has been suffering from a very rare and incurable disease called \”eosinophilic esophagitis,\” abbreviated as EOE. This disease is extremely rare and incurable. What does it mean to have this disease? This means that he \”will die from eating or even smelling most foods.\” He is allergic to almost all foods and can only eat seven kinds of food: apples, grapes, tomatoes, lemons, bananas, potatoes, and ordinary rice . Christopher is immunocompromised and cannot go to crowded places, such as restaurants and playgrounds. People coming and going are all pathogens to him. Every carelessness could cost him his life at any time. It wasn\’t until the age of 6 that Christopher finally added another food to his diet – Chick-fil-A\’s tater tots. Christopher was very happy, he finally knew what a potato lattice tasted like, and he soon fell in love with this food. He said: \”Always eating tomatoes is too unsound. Eating potatoes can make me look more like an ordinary person.\” It\’s really a sad sentence. Ordinary people are a trait that most of us have since birth, but for EOE patients like Christopher, becoming an ordinary person has become the most luxurious pursuit in life. Before that, my understanding of allergies was that a few red spots on my body would swell and itch, and I would be fine if I took some medicine or an IV drip. I never thought that allergies would cause any major problems. Until I saw Christopher\’s story, I had a new understanding of allergies. I specifically searched for information about allergies and found that although there are very few people like Christopher suffering from EoE, there are still all kinds of strange allergic diseases in the world. There are many people around us who suffer from various allergies. Allergic rhinitis, pollen allergy, seafood allergy, penicillin allergy, dust and catkin allergy, cat hair allergy, formaldehyde allergy, alcohol allergy… In addition to these, there are some unheard of allergy symptoms. For example, if you are allergic to ultraviolet rays and dare not go out. There are also people who are allergic to water. Yes, you heard me right, really allergic to water. You must be curious about how they drink water and take a bath, right? They will feel pain when drinking water, and their skin will be itchy, red and swollen. They cannot take a bath for more than one minute, otherwise the body will feel like an explosion and the pain will be unbearable. It’s so difficult to even drink water, it makes me feel hopeless just thinking about it! I remembered that I have always had a friend around me whose son had allergies since childhood, but I had never heard her tell me too many details. So I specifically talked to her about it, what is it like to raise a child with allergies? As soon as she started talking, I realized how much suffering she had been going through. When her son was two months old, he was found to be allergic to milk and soy. for breastfeeding, she has not eaten milk, biscuits, cakes, soy milk, tofu and other dairy and soy products for almost two years, and cannot even eat soy sauce. Once she accidentally ate a beef ball, and her son had diarrhea, which scared her so much that she broke into a cold sweat. She said: \”It\’s difficult to raise children with allergies. Not only do you have to be very careful about their diet, but you also have uncomprehending looks from people around you, which makes you extremely stressed.\” Every time relatives and friends gather for dinner, other children are eating loudly. While stuttering ice cream and drinking yogurt, her son could only watch others eating. When she poured food for her son from the smoldering kettle she brought with her, the relatives and friends around her would \”educate\” her: \”You raised your child too expensively and gave him nothing to eat. He will be a picky eater in the future…\” She said that whenever this happened, she felt particularly uncomfortable, as if she had eaten a fly. Gradually, she also developed a strong heart and no longer cares about them. After all, it is difficult for people who have never experienced allergies to understand. But what surprised her was that some doctors knew very little about allergies. There was a neighbor who was a pediatrician in their community. One time she saw her son and gave him a bottle of Yakult. She smiled and rejected his kindness, saying that the child could not drink it. Unexpectedly, the doctor\’s neighbor actually said: \”Your child must have never eaten snacks. If you don\’t give him anything to eat, how can he grow up? No wonder he is so thin!\” She was shocked at the time, and even the pediatrician didn\’t understand. , it’s no wonder that ordinary people who eat melons think that people with allergies are “pretentious” and “valuable”. This has always been a problem for people with allergies. In addition to enduring physical torture, they often face incomprehension and strange looks from most people around them, because in the eyes of many people, allergies are often seen as living too \”hypocritically\”. Some people with allergies may even encounter teasing and pranks from people around them. I saw a netizen with allergies on the Internet and wrote about his own experience. There was a gathering of colleagues and everyone drank together. He said that he was allergic to alcohol and could not drink. However, no one believed him and said he was making excuses. In desperation, he could only drink a small glass. As soon as he finished drinking it, he got bumps on his face and vomited. He himself didn\’t know that the allergic reaction was so serious this time. After that, his face became more and more purple, and his whole body turned upside down. At this time, another colleague laughed at him for \”pretending to be cool\”, and it wasn\’t until he fell to the ground with a \”plop\” that he realized how to send him to the hospital. After that, he decisively resigned and stayed away from these harmful friends. It\’s lucky to have a life saved, but not everyone is so lucky. There was a child with a milk allergy. He ate a fruit popsicle and had no idea that it was stained with milk from other popsicles. As a result, he suffocated to death on the school playground. He was struggling in agony on the dirt floor of the playground. From the scratch marks left behind, one can imagine how painful and tragic he must have been before he died. Life or death, there is no chance to come back. Compared with ordinary people, the lives of allergic people are burdened with extra hardships. Even if we cannot help them, we should give them the most basic respect and do not regard them as \”others\”, let alone make fun of their lives. People with allergies are really not \”hypocritical\” or \”pretentious\”. They just want to live well and safely.With. If you have people with allergies around you, please remember: please do not advise people with food allergies to eat the food they are allergic to! Please do not force people with alcohol allergies to drink! Don’t secretly add allergens to other people’s food when they explicitly refuse!