A young college student died of an acute allergic response to a brownie she received from a friend, which turned out to contain peanut components.
Hannah Glass, a 19-year-old Wisconsin college student, began vomiting and breaking out in hives after only two slices of the gluten-free treat, eventually shutting down her entire body. According to her concerned parents, who have spoken out about the tragedy, the girl was unaware that the brownie contained toasted peanut flour until she took her first bite.
Her body began to react to the nuts within minutes, and she began to feel really ill. A women’s organization at Maranatha Baptist University devised the brownie. It was manufactured with a gluten-free baking flour replacement designed expressly for this purpose.
The student immediately called her parents for guidance, as her father David stated that she had previously suffered similar reactions to dodgy food. She was prescribed Benadryl, a sedative and antihistamine used to treat rashes, which appeared to help her calm.
After feeling better, the youngster decided to find a place to rest on campus. Hannah’s condition immediately deteriorated after she lay on her stomach, as she began to endure acute discomfort and difficulties breathing.
According to her parents, she went into anaphylactic shock, her lung collapsed, and she passed out. Shortly after, David and Hannah’s mother arrived and handed her her EpiPen while they called 911. Hannah was experiencing many seizures when emergency responders arrived.
Her heart stopped for four minutes as she was placed into the back of an ambulance. “She was completely unresponsive, and I was incredibly helpless,” David explained, sad. When tests revealed she had severe cerebral edema, physicians immediately put her on a ventilator to help her heart operate again.
“When Hannah rolled on her side, the Anaphylaxis reaction that we had not seen before hit her incredibly hard,” the parents wrote in a somber Facebook post following Hannah’s death.
“This prompted her to gasp for air, resulting in the collapse of a lung, aggravating the problem and rendering the ability of us, the EMTs, and the doctor at Watertown Hospital difficult to repair.
“The majority of her brain was clearly, gravely, critically, and terminally injured in the absence of life-sustaining treatments. There was no discussion about quality of life or anything like that. This was literally a matter of life or death!”
Hannah’s parents opted to withdraw her from life support after five days on a ventilator. Hannah died November 10.