Raising a Child with Autism Day by Day: The Jalapeno Pepper Lesson

It was early evening and Marisa and I were preparing one of her hot and spicy vegetarian stir-fry recipes. This particular recipe called for cumin and cayenne pepper. It did not call for jalapeno peppers, so when Marisa asked if she could cut a jalapeno pepper in to the recipe, I thought it would be a fun experiment that could be toned down with some brown rice if necessary. I did not for a minute think that within an hour, we would be making decisions about whether or not to head for the hospital emergency room.

Marisa did a wonderful job mincing the one very small jalapeno pepper and stirring it in to the almost completed stir-fry on the stove. She had perfected her mincing technique by preparing the family salad each night, and I had no doubt that she was better for this job than I was.

"You really minced that up so fine!" I commented as I thought about my own not so perfect chopping jobs of dinner vegetables. She was clearly much better than I was at doing this.

"Thanks!" she replied as she headed off to do something else for a few minutes.

"I'll be serving dinner in 5 minutes!" I called out.

When Marisa came back into the kitchen she was rubbing her ear and complaining that she had pain.

That's weird, I thought. She never gets ear infections.

"What is it that you feel?" I asked.

"It burns!" she answered.

"Burns? Well, you happen to have your annual well-check-up tomorrow morning. We'll have to have the doctor take a look," I said.

We sat down to dinner and Marisa was clearly not looking well. Suddenly she was screaming.

"My nose is burning. Give me ice!" She couldn't wait and got up from the table.

I put some chipped ice in a small plastic sandwich bag and handed it to her, not really understanding what was going on. Dan and I were both totally confused as we watched her sitting there eating and holding ice on her nose. By the time she finished dinner I was convinced that the problem was an allergic reaction to the peppers, but she had eaten jalapeno peppers before. Then again, allergies could start at any time.

The screaming and crying continued, as she tried to take her mind off it by checking her e-mail. Dan and I started to wonder if we should drop everything and head to the ER. We realized that the burning ear pain was not an ear infection after all. It was something else that was going on here. Something we had never seen before, and it was scarier than any ailment I had ever encountered in the 33 years I had of raising 4 daughters.

Marisa was still sitting at the computer crying and holding the ice to her nose when she suddenly started to scream that her eyes were burning too. Now she was really hurting and all I wanted to do was hold on to her tightly and make it go away. I was feeling totally helpless as I realized I couldn't help. Do we go to the ER?

"I'm going to go to bed," she cried.

"I'm going to google jalapeno pepper allergy," I announced with a hopeful tone in my voice.

Marisa left the room crying. I headed for the computer and typed jalapeno pepper burning in the google search bar. Up came a link that was hard to believe! It was a link to a blog post entitled jalapeno pepper hands: how to cure the burn at Newly.com

Newley Purnell, a journalist in Bangkok, had written a story about a friend who had burning hands from jalapeno peppers and what happened to him after he went to the ER with the problem. The story was actually quite humorous, as it pointed out how the ER doctors tried everything to help this man and then sent him home in the same condition he had come in. All they had to tell him was to wait it out. I wanted to print the story and read it to Marisa, so she would understand that she was not going to die as she had already decided.

I hit print and then realized that there were 90 pages of other stories to follow. OH NO! How do I cancel this now? Rather than cancel the printing job, I became enthralled by page after page of jalapeno burn stories all caused by not washing ones hands after handling the peppers. I printed out a book of blog posts all from people like me who were searching for answers to the affliction of pain after handling jalapeno peppers.

I rushed down the hall to give Marisa the good news ... that she had a reaction to the oils in the jalapeno peppers. She had not washed her hands after handling the pepper, and once the oil from the pepper gets absorbed in your hands, it causes the burning that can spread from your hands to any other part of your body that you touch.

As I entered her room, Marisa was now crying about burning under her fingernails.

"Good news!" I said as I explained to her what had happened. I read a few of the stories and then told her that she needed to always wash her hands after handling not just poultry, but any food even if it wasn't something sticky. Clearly washing hands with soap and water after handling food, is just as important as washing before handling food. Obviously, there are many adults who didn't know that, since so many had been and will probably continue to be afflicted by this nightmarish situation.

Marisa was in pain, but she was visibly relieved to understand the reason for the pain. Knowing it would eventually go away was a big help emotionally.