I'm Just Furious...

[SilverSlipper]

My daughter is 7 years old and has celiac disease. She seems to have most trouble with directly/indirectly ingesting gluten. As the months progress, her sensitivity seems to increase, but she doesn't seem to have problems with cross contamination... yet. (I'm telling you this so you can get an idea as to the amount of sensitivity she has).

We went to Bruster's today for ice cream. She loves mint chocolate chip and my understanding is that it is gluten free, though they don't guarantee that there won't be a cross contamination. I bought a large mint chocolate chip milkshake for us all to share and she drank it on the way home. She commented that the chocolate pieces were really crunchy which should've set off warning signs for me, but I didn't stop to check. When we got home, I noticed the chocolate pieces were very large but (again and foolishly), I continued dividing it up and set it out for the girls to eat. A few minutes later, I was drinking my share and realized that yes, the chocolate pieces were crunchy. I took the lid off and stirred to the bottom to pull out one of the larger pieces and realized that all the blasted chocolate bits were actually crunch bars (which do make her sick).

I took it away and immediately called Bruster's who said they would check and call me back. After a few minutes, the manager called me back and I explained that the chocolate was different and that my daughter's condition is one that she can't eat the crunch type bar. She looked and said that yes, she was seeing that there were crunch bars in the mint chocolate chip instead of the chocolate pieces. I was really afraid that I would be rude, so I told her that I would call her back in a day or so, but that I needed to take care of my daughter at the moment since she had already ingested it. She apologized profusely.

I told my daughter, who immediately burst into tears. She hates the stomach cramps and does so well on the diet that it really upsets me that someone changed an ingredient in something that she has been eating without problem. I gave her some digestive enzymes and I'm hoping that it helps. I'm furious with Bruster's and myself at the moment. I'm hoping that she won't have strong reactions since the cereal in that chocolate is not a lot and that the chocolate was only part of the shake. I might just be grasping at straws, but I think I'll cry myself if she has cramps again.

[JennyC]

I'm so sorry that happened. I would be furious too. Please don't beat yourself up. Things like this can happen to anyone. I really hope your daughter does not really get sick.

[strawberrygm]

i agree. it is totally not your fault. yet i understand how you feel. i bought wheat free oreos, thinking they were safe, only to realize after my daughter was loving them that they were indeeed wheat free, but not at all gluten free.

[celiac-mommy]

For the 1st 6mo after my dd diagnosis, I wasn't aware of resources such as this site, so I didn't realize the cc issue and I thought I was being so careful. One day around the 6mo mark, I was making a sandwich for her and me. I had a huge lightbulb (and HUGE guilt) moment as I dipped the knife in the pb, put it on my regular bread, dipped in again and put it on her gluten-free bread. Not sure why I didn't realize it earlier. I had a major breakdown realizing that as good as she was feeling, she hadn't been gluten-free afterall. I went and bought her all her own food and a sharpie, marked all the food in the fridge and cupboards and threw away a lot of food. I still feel guilty about that 3 years later. I can think of 5 instances in the last 3 years where she has been glutened and 2 of them were from me.... Accidents happen no matter how careful you try to be-don't beat yourself up over it!! I think of everything as a learning experience and no matter how you might want to change the past, you can't, so I try to learn how to do things differently the next time.