Torben Campbell

October 2nd, l981 - September 12, 2011

 

 

Born in Comox, British Columbia to Robin and Sylvia Campbell, Torben was a sweet baby and easy to care for.  He awoke in the morning with a smile on his face.  This lasted for many months until he began eating food.  The first thing we noticed after feeding him eggs were blisters on his eyeballs.  That was a very strange thing to see.  We knew then that he was allergic to eggs.  So we just didn't give him any. 

 

Then we fed him peanuts.  That night he seemed to go into a very deep sleep and twitched throughout the night.  I sat up with him.  It didn't dawn on me that he was having a allergic reaction to the peanuts but other times when he had food with peanut butter in it, he got rashes and had difficulty breathing.  So we made sure he didn't have any peanut butter. 

 

As he got older, he would tell us his lips swelled when he ate peas.  So we kept him from peas. 

 

His behaviour changed from a pleasant child to being anxious and being "what I called a bad boy".  We were totally unaware of how to treat or raise this boy.  Not knowing that food was probably a trigger, we thought we were bad parents and he was a bad kid.  He seemed addicted to junk food and sugar which was probably the worst thing he could have in his system. 

 

Life moved on and Torben managed his allergies on his own until he was in a position where he had no control over his food intake.  That is when life changed for his family and life ended for him.  

 

I can't even imagine what it was like to suffocate from a restricted airway.  It is something I dare not visually go to.  

 

We received the late night call that Torben was in intensive care in Abbotsford, British Columbia.  We flew over immediately to see him.  What we saw was not pleasant.  He had tubes  coming out from every part of his body.  They had cold blankets on him to lesson the swelling of the brain.  He twitched from the lack of oxygen to the brain.  

 

His sisters were there with him.  Each privately spoke to him hoping he could hear them.  

 

We thought we would be bringing him home no matter what his condition.  When the doctor informed us that there was no hope, we fell apart.  

 

For five days Torben lingered.  We spoke to him, prayed, and sang.  The last hours of his life the family gave permission to let him go.  His father spoke the 23rd Psalm into his ear as he slipped away.  We were grateful that we had that time with him.  

 

How can food be so cruel?  Something that we need to survive took Torben's life in the end.  He was going to turn thirty in two weeks.