Author Spotlight
Grace Pei
Halfway through the bus ride to the 2023 Band Glow Show at SM South, sophomore Anna Nazar’s eyes were swelling up. Her throat started to itch, and she pulled out her phone camera to see that her eyes were red.
Anna immediately called her mom, Kelsey Nazar, and told her that she was having an allergic reaction but didn’t know what had caused it. After getting off the bus at SM South, her mom picked her up. At the time, their typical plan for a minor reaction was to go home, take Benadryl — a medicine that helps treat allergy symptoms — and let the reaction pass.
But as they approached an intersection between Children’s Mercy and their house, Anna’s throat began to tighten up.
“Hey Mom, turn left here, I want to go to Children’s Mercy.”
They were admitted to the emergency room where nurses took Anna’s blood pressure, measured her weight and eventually administered an EpiPen.
Anna has an allergy to soy, a common preservative in processed foods. She was diagnosed with eight allergies as a baby after having an anaphylactic reaction to soy milk, but the rest of her allergies went away on their own throughout elementary school.
“We knew something wasn’t quite right, but we didn’t really know what it was,” Kelsey said.
Anna is starting a food allergy club with sophomore Lucy Costello next school year after getting the idea from her friend, sophomore Halima Talbi. English teacher Kristin Anderson has agreed to be their sponsor.
Anna’s soy allergy caused complications three years ago when she was stranded in the Denver airport for a day and a half with nothing to eat other than the Sun-Maid raisins she dug up from the bottom of her backpack. The only open airport restaurant without food containing soy was a smoothie store that wouldn’t let her order just a cup of fruit.
Additionally, Anna’s freshman year biology class used M&M’s to demonstrate natural selection and she had to wear gloves. This year in her chemistry class, her teacher lit a soy candle, causing her eyes to itch.
Due to the lack of awareness, Anna hopes to create a club social media account to post instructional videos to teach teachers how to use an EpiPen in case of an allergic reaction. She also gives informational speeches about food allergies in her competitive speech competitions.
However, that didn’t stop her peer from telling her the idea was dumb because the issue wasn’t important enough.
“No one makes fun of people with cancer and stuff because that would be weird,” Anna said. “For some reason, food allergies have just kind of become like the butt of a joke, and people think it’s okay to make fun of them.”
Sophomore Lucy Costello took three Reese’s Mini Peanut Butter Cups from the one-pound bag in her kitchen and cut them into halves, eating each half one at a time.
Then she washed them down with orange juice, cringing at the taste of the peanuts, her mind associating them with having an allergic reaction.
“It’s like my brain is telling me it’s gonna kill me,” Lucy said.
She takes her “potion” every other day, nicknamed by her parents so her 7-year-old self — a major Harry Potter fan — would eat them.
Lucy started oral immunotherapy, a two-year desensitization program, in second grade for her severe peanut allergy. Before starting the treatment, she couldn’t be near peanuts without feeling some sort of minor reaction, though only anaphylactic reaction happened as a baby.
“I thought that was such an amazing thing because I would do anything for her not to have to worry about every single thing she puts in her mouth,” Lucy’s mom Aislinn Costello said.
When Lucy’s friend, sophomore Anna Nazar, texted her about starting a food allergy club a few weeks ago, Lucy immediately agreed to help.
She was already studying allergies for her Multi-Genre Project in Honors English class and was interested in building a community with other students who had food allergies.
There are around 70 students that have reported food allergies at SM East, according to nurse Stephanie Ptacek, and over 40 students have reported anaphylactic food allergies, which are more severe.
“Teenagers with any difference, it affects them,” Nurse Ptacek said. “Everybody just wants to fit in. I mean, not just teenagers, but people. So, yeah, I think it has to be hard to always carry an EpiPen with you or to constantly be thinking about the food that you’re about to put in your mouth.”
Lucy has experienced sitting alone at the tiny allergy-free lunch table in her preschool, so she recognizes the difficulties for schools to accommodate food allergies.
When Lucy was younger, she wouldn’t go to other people’s houses for fear of exposure to peanuts. She was homeschooled through kindergarten and first grade after a kindergarten-welcoming event had laid out peanut candies on the table for the kids.
“It was one moment where I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ because all of the candy that was on the table wasn’t safe for her to be around,” Aislinn said.
Through the club, she hopes to connect with other students who’ve had similar experiences with food allergies.
“There’s people like Anna who, without their allergy, they’re still the same person,” Lucy said. “But they still need to be aware of [their allergy], because it’s life and death for some people, and it’s scary to think that people won’t take it seriously.”
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