Ever since many of us were young, we have had to deal with bullies in school. Some of them were outright cruel while others just picked on us because they thought it was funny.
Unfortunately, there are times when this type of behavior can turn very bad, and that is the case in London, UK. A 13-year-old boy, Karanbir Cheema died as a result of the prank played by another child at school.
Karanbir has a number of allergies, including dairy, wheat, gluten, egg, milk, and tree nuts. When a classmate threw a piece of cheese at him, it ended up causing an allergic reaction.
Although he did not eat the cheese, it did hit his neck and came directly in contact with the skin. It wasn’t long before he was heading off to the hospital with a severe allergy attack.
Within days, Karanbir passed away at the hospital. It was ruled as a case of post-cardiac arrest syndrome.
He was living on life support for a while but his parents decided to turn it off. His mother spoke about the moment they had to say goodbye, saying that they didn’t want to switch it off as it wasn’t fair for him to go through this.
She went on to say: “He smiled when the machine was turned off, they took him into another room and we said our last goodbyes before he was taken down and he had a smile on his face.”
“You’re always praying for the last minute miracle his brothers and sisters and his uncles were all there beside him.”
He did have an EpiPen at school but it was outdated by about a year. Prior to the time that he had a cardiac arrest he only received that shot and no other adrenaline was given to him.
The boy who threw the cheese at him said he was only playing around and wasn’t aware that he had allergies to dairy. It’s unusual for this type of skin contact to cause a severe allergic reaction and it is rarely fatal.
According to a pediatric allergy consultant: “Where this case is extraordinarily unusual is the nature of the event that led to the anaphylaxis.
“Because severe allergic reactions through skin contact are very, very uncommon indeed, and if it was skin contact alone that caused, in this case fatal, anaphylaxis, I believe that to be unprecedented.
“I have been unable to find any case reports. I’ve canvassed widely around this and I’m not aware of any fatal cases.”
