“Son's allergy sends mother on a quest”
Tuesday, April 18, 2006

In July, a week after her son Kevin's first birthday, Jodi Stokes gave him his first cracker with peanut butter. Like lots of youngsters, he played with it before he took a bite.

In minutes, red welts appeared on his arms where he had touched them with the gooey treat.
His eye swelled shut. His lips blew up, three or four times their normal size.

"It was the scariest thing I've ever seen," Stokes said.

Stokes quickly called the pediatrician's office, where a nurse told her to give her son Benadryl and call 911. In the ambulance on the way to Presbyterian Hospital Matthews, paramedics stopped Kevin's anaphylactic shock with a shot of epinephrine.

He was diagnosed with a peanut allergy that could have been fatal.

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