Revealed: Graduate, 25, sends heartbreaking text to his mother before a snack with nuts put him in a coma

A mother has revealed the panicked messages she exchanged with her allergic son after he realized a snack he had just eaten contained walnuts.

Louise Cadman, 56, urged her 25-year-old son George Cadman-Ithell to seek help immediately after he started feeling unwell.

But he had to run eight minutes home because he didn’t have the adrenaline pen prescribed to tackle severe allergic reactions, having never had a serious attack before.

Despite paramedics performing CPR, the graduate remains in hospital in a vegetative state two months later, with his family fearing he will not recover.

His mother yesterday revealed Mr Cadman-Ithell’s heartbreaking situation to raise awareness of how people with even previously mild food allergies can become catastrophically ill.

He bought a bag of ‘saucissons secs’ salami in Sidcup, south-east London, on September 20 and messaged his mother to say they were ‘delicious’.

Seconds later he sent her a second text saying: ‘F*** they contain walnuts!’

Mr Cadman-Ithell – likened by his family to an absent-minded professor – had overlooked the words ‘aux noix’, which means ‘with nuts’ in French, on the salami’s packaging.

Louise Cadman, 56, has revealed the frantic messages she exchanged with her allergic son

He bought a bag of ‘saucissons secs’ salami in Sidcup, south-east London, on September 20 and messaged his mother to say they were ‘delicious’.

Further on in English it also said ‘with walnuts’.

When he was five years old, he was diagnosed with an allergy to nuts, including cashews, walnuts and almonds. His concerned mother sent him a series of messages asking if he was okay and urging him to seek medical help.

Mr Cadman-Ithell ran home, where his husband Joe Nolan, 25, administered his EpiPen.

But he went into cardiac arrest and his brain was deprived of oxygen for 26 minutes, causing severe brain damage.

He remained in a vegetative state yesterday in a rehabilitation unit at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, north-west London.

He can open his eyes and breathe on his own, but cannot communicate. “It just destroyed us,” his mother said yesterday. “I can’t bear the thought of this happening to another family.”

Ms Cadman, a former bank manager from Upminster, east London, said his first allergic reaction as a child came after eating a Guylian seashell chocolate at his grandparents’ home.

He “did his best” to avoid nuts, she told the Sunday Times, but suffered 15 attacks.

Whenever his symptoms subsided after taking antihistamine tablets, he never used his EpiPen. Mr Cadman-Ithell graduated with a first-class degree in urban planning, design and management from University College London two weeks before the response and was saving to study for a master’s degree.

She said she hoped discussing her son’s life-changing experience would help prevent similar tragedies, adding: ‘If you have an allergy it can range from relatively mild to fatal from one attack to the next.

“This is a time of year when people are trying new foods, eating out and going to people’s homes, and they may become complacent, just like George.”

A GoFundMe page supporting Mr Cadman-Ithell’s recovery topped £13,000 last night.