Darren Campbell
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 14/98) - Every new school year always makes Sandra Aitken just a little more anxious.

That is when she has to start educating new students, parents, and teachers about her son Chris' potentially fatal allergy to nuts.

"The beginning of the school year is always the most stressful time," said Aitken. "With new classes, new kids, and new parents it's an education process."

Because of the seven-year-old's allergic reaction to nuts, the Grade 3 student at N.J. Macpherson school could die if he is exposed to the food.

And this is becoming a common problem in schools all over Canada. It turns out Yellowknife is no different.

Anaphylaxis is the life-threatening form of the allergic reaction and it can come suddenly. There are several initial symptoms and if not stopped they can worsen to a drop in blood pressure, loss of consciousness and even death. The only way to hopefully stop the reaction is with an adrenaline shot.

Considering the high stakes involved, Sandra goes to great lengths to educate everyone at the school about her son's condition.

That includes giving the teachers a package about his allergies and how to give an adrenaline shot before the school year starts.

But the big work is educating the parents of other children in the school. Sandra said she uses the parent information night at the start of the school year to explain her son's condition to them and the precautions that must be taken.

"I try to humanize it a bit," said Aitken. "I try to explain my kid could die if your kid is eating peanut butter."

Children allergic to food like peanut butter or nuts can experience a reaction in a number of ways. One example is a child gets a reaction from eating a cheese sandwich that had been cut by a knife that had a trace of peanut butter on it.

Pam Petten, principal of N.J. Macpherson, said the school does a number of things to protect children with food allergies.

She said all the teachers at the Kindergarten to Grade 5 school know about the students' allergies and printouts of their pictures are distributed.

The school also bans particular foods -- peanut butter in Chris' case -- from the classroom of an allergic child. It also bans the eating of food on the playground and from the common areas that the child could use.

Petten said it is frightening to have a child in the school who could die from just touching peanut butter. But she said the whole school knows about the allergy problems of its students.

"The kids are very good at letting us know if someone has anything with peanut butter in it."