If you know me, you know that I have food allergies. One is wheat, which is uncomfortable but not dangerous – hives, phlegm, coughing, some wheezing, and stomach pain. It’s the one that almost killed me years ago because we didn’t know about it. I would eat wheat, it would foam up out of my gut, I would inhale some of the foam, and then there was bacterial bronchitis. Over and over and over, until I could barely breathe.
We caught it.
I got better.
The other is a family allergy to mushrooms. I have multiple relatives with the same allergy, and I had reacted to touching mushrooms before, hives and a rash where I had come into contact. I avoid it like the plague, and it’s the allergy I’ll bring up any time there is going to be food. Wheat I can deal with, mushrooms is dangerous.
Tuesday night, I ate some home canned tomato sauce I had received as a gift. It was a slow reaction, fortunately. In about ten minutes I was coughing, my tongue and lips were swelling, itching, and burning, and I was Concerned. I’d never actually eaten any to know how bad the reaction would get, so we decided to go to the ER.
As a side note, we missed urgent care by 10 minutes. UGH.
My husband packed me and my two expired epi-pens (I know!) into the car, and we made a stressful twenty minute drive to the hospital.
By the time I got there, the reaction was beginning to subside, so I spent two hours or so waiting for it to entirely disappear, which it did. I was given prednisone and benadryl along with a prescription for prednisone for the next few days, and I got to go home. This time, taking it, I didn’t get the rush of energy or urge to eat, so that was wonderful.
So it all ended well, but we had an alarming evening.
And the moral of this story is that I need to get new epi-pens and that I won’t be eating home canned anything again!
Do you have food allergies? How severe are they? Inquiring minds want to know! *smile*
