A family in Minnesota is mourning the death of a 16-year-old after he suffered from a severe food allergy from eating pancakes.
Scott Johnson has a severe dairy allergy that even just a small amount of it is enough to send him to the emergency room. And he has been this way ever since he was young. His family already knows how to pick his food and to insist for his food to be cooked right when they go out in restaurants, which was a very rare thing to happen.
In June 2014, the family, with his sisters and mom, Cindy, went out to grab some pancakes in Minnesota Nice café who, they said, knows them very well. When the mother chanced upon a gluten-free pancake, she asked the server whether it's also free of dairy. The server came back and told her, after talking to the chef, that it was indeed dairy free.
Scott ate two pancakes until he started insisting they had to leave. He might have already been suffering from allergic reactions and needed to use his EpiPen and nebulizer, which he unfortunately left at home.
By the time they arrived, none of his first-aid supplies worked that the family had to call 911, who then airlifted him to a hospital in Fargo. He died three days after.
Scott has just suffered from a severe anaphylactic shock, where the entire body develops an allergic reaction. The windpipe narrows significantly, rashes appear, and blood pressure dips. The body can then go into shock, causing the vital organs to fail like the teen's heart.
Steve, his dad, regrets the fact that he wasn't even able to talk to him for the last time. On the way to his work, which was 2 hours away, he received a call when he was about 18 miles from home.
The family today has just pressed charged against the café and hopes that restaurants would make some changes like accommodating special needs of diners with food allergies. They also hope other families would take allergic reactions seriously and ask questions about the food they're going to eat if they're dining out.
