Food Allergy Hero Of the Month: Alex Staponkus
By Red Sneaker Ambassador Alex Staponkus
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And on Instagram: @stocktradesforoakley
By the time I was 4, I wasn’t able to read much more than Dr. Suess books, but old enough to read the label of a candy wrapper, or a birthday cake. P-E-A-N-U-T was the first word I ever knew how to spell. My name is Alex Staponkus, and I was diagnosed with a severe peanut allergy and asthma at 2 years old.
As a kid, I remember thinking how annoying it was having to explain to everyone that, no, I cannot eat a Reeses’ Peanut Butter cup, and that yes, I would die. I found out that flat out saying I would die was easier than telling them I would go into anaphylaxis, because it was frustrating trying to explain anaphylaxis to a 10 year old as a 10 year old. It also scared them into leaving it at just that. I even had a teacher in 1st Grade that didn’t remotely understand the concept of a food allergy. I remember working on my math problems and asking her a question, and her coming over and chewing peanut M&Ms in my face. But I think saying things like that sort of changed the way I looked at it as well. It became a boogeyman, something that my Mom had told me my whole life I needed to avoid like the plague. I developed a fear, a chronic stress surrounding it. And that is not to disparage my Mother either, because she was just as trapped in that dark bog of fear as me, and that’s just the way it is for allergy parents. They are told by a doctor that their small child, sometimes as young as 2, 3, 4 years old could die from eating a cookie, and then told good luck. Is it really their fault if they are a little overprotective? But that fear certainly gripped me for a long time during elementary school, and going into middle school.
The problem with that fear is that Middle Schoolers can be pretty cruel. They sniff out the deepest insecurities that they have among them, and then absolutely ravage each other over them. That’s pretty much what happened to me in 6th grade. I remember towards the first day of school telling people in my classes I have a peanut allergy, and then being taunted for it the whole year. “So if I threw a Snickers bar at you you would die?”, Yeah, I could. So after that year I stopped talking about it. COVID made it pretty easy too, peanut allergies don’t matter when you’re not at school. By 8th grade, nobody knew. Only me, and a few very close, real friends. Unfortunately for me though, my school locked our seats at lunch to only our class that year, so I wasn’t able to sit with those friends. This led to me sitting with some guys that were not exactly considerate of my allergy. Once they found out, it was all over. The taunts got increasingly worse everyday, until one day it escalated to one of them, the worst, literally wiping peanut butter on my lunchbox. He wasn’t the biggest kid either, and I almost tackled him off his seat. I knew I had to be the bigger man though, so I walked away.
That day was a flurry of emotions, from anger and sadness to fear. I remember my Mom came to pick me up from school once I ended up in the office after having told the Vice Principal, who was the only admin I was even willing to talk to about it. He was a cool guy, he was in his early 30’s, and had a 2 year old son himself who had a peanut allergy, so he knew what it was like. I remember crying in the car in the parking lot, just asking her why. Why me. Why was I stuck with this. Why me? None of my siblings have it, I didn’t have any friends that had it, I was the only one. That feeling is so isolating. It locks you in a box, and throws away the key. Walking into school the next day was the worst feeling too. Everyone saw at lunch, and everyone knew something big happened. The boy who did it was in my 1st period science class, and I expected him to be gone with some sort of suspension. But guess what? He was sitting in his chair, sleeping. He got off almost scot free, his punishment was 3 days of lunch detention. For essentially pointing a gun at me, his only consequence was being forced to skip lunch for 3 days. That was almost worse than the feelings from the day before. I was about ready to finish the job in class, and give him what I felt like he deserved, but once again, I was the bigger man. I sat in that school the whole day, feeling like the entire world was against me.
Around the same time that these events transpired, I was selected to complete a double- blind study on the drug Dupixent underneath Dr. Edwin Kim at UNC’s allergy research facility. This was essentially a peanut trial, where you are given either a dose of Dupixent, which is a drug used to treat eczema and asthma, or a placebo. They have you do oral immunotherapy (OIT) over a year or so, and they use it to see whether or not Dupixent was effective at treating a peanut allergy. Being realistic, as a 12 year old, this study sucked. OIT is the worst thing I have ever done in my life. Eating something that is poison to my body, and then fighting the reactions for hours afterward was horrible. On top of that, they drew what felt like gallons of blood from my body every few visits. But it was the first time that I realized something absolutely vital to growing my perspective on my allergy. It was not scary. I was jabbed with my epi-pen so many times that I lost count. I ate peanuts mixed with mint chocolate chip ice cream (which has forever ruined that flavor for me), fought the reaction, and then either took an epi-pen, or didn’t need it, and then the nurse working with me upped the amount of peanut and repeated the cycle. This was what I would like to think of as the hard way of getting over my fear. It was straight exposure therapy, and it tested my mental fortitude in a way incomparable to anything else in my entire life.
I am 16 years old now, and a Sophomore in highschool. Living with a peanut allergy is not something that I have to think about much anymore, and not out of a lack of care, moreso out of a lack of time. With the focus having shifted to other things, who has time to think about it when you have to keep your grades up, or remember what time practice is? But those first 13-14 years, the peanut allergy was more than a major aspect, it was life shaping. From a cautionary tale as a kid, to an insecurity in Middle School, it has finally morphed into something that I can comfortably live with. “It is what it is” has become a sort of mantra for me recently, because yeah, I may have been born with something that not many people have, and yeah, it sucks. But why not me? Kids are born with things way worse than a peanut allergy, and so in that regard, I am blessed to have it.
My Mom had me take photos with my Red Sneakers when I was younger, but I never really knew the mission until recently. At the end of Summer this year, I had a conversation with her regarding all these things. We talked about many of the things that I have included in this blog post, and more. We talked about the way it felt for her, and how her fears have gone from an ever present looming threat over my life, to a nagging worry in the back of the mind of a caring mother. I want that for all mothers of children with food allergies. I think that with proper care and awareness, as well as potentially even a cure in the coming years, allergies could be wiped out as a whole. No longer would anyone have to worry and stress for their child. My peanut allergy led to me growing up at a younger age, because it was the only choice I had. While that comes with its tradeoffs, positive and negative, if I had it my way, food allergy kids would be free without having to be anything more than a kid.
So, what am I doing about it? I’ve always had an express interest in the stock market and the way money works. Sitting at the dinner table at Thanksgiving, the conversations between the men were never about football, or the weather. It was always about the stock market. What’s up, what’s down, what my Grandpa was buying and what my Dad was selling. I was taking part in these conversations as young as 10, and that’s largely where my love for it came from. I started trading with my own money a little over a year ago, and by the end of this last Summer of ‘23, I decided that I wanted to combine my love for trading with my goal of raising awareness for something that I cared deeply about. I realized I had a golden opportunity to do something that I have never seen done before. I remembered Red Sneakers for Oakley, and how my Mom had me wear my red sneakers every year on May 20th, and so I reached out, and the rest is history. I have created a stock portfolio dedicated to raising money for RSFO, where I receive donations, and then I invest them into stocks. At the end of the year next year, I will sell the stocks, and donate all the money to Red Sneakers! So far, it has been an amazing experience for me, and it has fulfilled me in a way that nothing else has ever before. It feels to me like it is more than just a charity initiative. For me, it is a personal contribution to the future. It is helping families and parents, and it is helping kids that were just like me.
Check me out at: https://stocktradesforoakley.weebly.com/
And on Instagram: @stocktradesforoakley
