Seriously ABC...what is so funny about food allergies???

Grrrr...please note, before you read this blog post, the mama bear in me is seriously coming out.

You were warned....As a mother of three I have next to no time to watch television.  Granted, I catch many hours of Sesame Street, Dora and the like, but to sit down and watch a show without animated characters doesn't happen very often. 

However, for some reason, my babies seem to go to bed early on Sunday evenings after the business of the weekends and I sometimes catch an episode of some random show.  I just so happened to catch an episode of Brothers and Sisters on ABC about a year ago when a hurried stressed out mom encouraged her daughter to pack a peanut butter sandwich to school.  When the daughter piped up that her school was nut free the mom just said in passing, "oh tell them it's soy butter."  Not cool ABC.  As a mom of a severely peanut allergic child and who benefits greatly from a nut free campus at his FANTASTIC school, an event like this could cause a great deal of harm to a child like mine. 

So that irked me but I got over it. 

Then Brothers and Sisters had another inappropriate comment about food allergies in an episode I didn't catch, but I did read an article about it.  Seriously?  Again?  why are food allergies now considered free for all in the world of TV?

BUT...nothing in my opinion topped a few minutes of a show I caught on Wednesday night.  All the kids were sick this week, as was Travis, so I had sat down in the recliner to try to coax Annie to sleep.  In the opening minutes of the show "Happy Endings"  there was a scene were a girl told her friends about her being severely allergic to shellfish, another boy said that he was...long story short...the girl got a shellfish slung on her and her "friend" said he lied about being allergic.  All the while, another friend, jabbed her in the leg with an epipen and then rolled back over to watch TV.  This makes me seriously angry because the whole segment was obviously meant to be very funny.  As a Mom who has had to administer epinephrine to her small son on more than one occasion I can assure you, the instances in which that medication is necessary is anything but comical.

Not to mention that the show depicted the medication  being given totally incorrectly.  And anytime epi is administered the person needs to be taken (preferably by ambulance) to the closest ER.

I suppose in the grand scheme of things this is not a huge deal, but it just saddens me that an issue that is of huge concern to some children and adults alike is for some reason funny in today's society.

I can't imagine that a television show would poke fun at someone with another life threatening chronic condition and rightly so.  So why is it funny that someone would be extremely allergic to a food?  Do you realize that "allergic" doesn't have to mean just coughing and sneezing.  It can mean some serious things like your body going into anaphylactic shock.  Epinephrine is meant to be a LIFE SAVING medication and if not administered quickly enough the results can be fatal. 

Just another reason for me to pass on by the night time shows airing on ABC.  There are plenty of other moral reasons that I don't watch alot of those shoes, but stepping on the toes of people who suffer from a very real condition is just another one.