A looooong while back, I was getting hives regularly, bacterial bronchitis regularly, couldn’t-walk-across-the-room breathing issues, the works.
On what had to be the 20th visit to urgent care, I got a pediatrician who took one look at me and said ‘food allergy’ and sent me off to get promptly tested.
The tests showed I was allergic to wheat, so I cut it from my diet and got an epipen. Gluten free was becoming big so it wasn’t a big deal.
The hives and reactions went away. I lost weight. My breathing improved.
Happily ever after, right?
Well, not so much.
I recently had the allergy tests run again because I wanted to get allergy shots. I showed up as NOT allergic to wheat. I argued with them, they ignored me, and I continued to NOT eat wheat despite assurances that I wasn’t actually allergic to it and insinuations that I was making it up.
2020 happened.
The lockdown kept me from getting shots.
2021 happened.
And inflation and weird missing items from store shelves. The pasta all vanished suddenly and then the panicking hoards hit the gluten free section for that pasta and gutted the area.
Which left me with limited options. I couldn’t afford the higher prices on what few things were left behind, and hunting down wheat free pastas and breads became impossible.
Plus, I had all this food storage with wheat.
So when we decided we would cut groceries for a while and pull from stores, I switched to baking bread and eating from stores.
Two months of that, no issue.
And then the hives hit.
I have hives everywhere. Face, eyes, mouth, hair, hands, bottoms of my feet, lady bits even. (Which TMI, sorry.) My hives had hives.
I put up with this for close to two weeks, cutting wheat again, but they were just getting worse, so my lovely momma made me call the doctor.
I explained to the nurse what happened, and she was professional enough not to laugh at me. I was upfront that this was entirely self inflicted but could they still do something.
Came back with a prescription for prednisone and an admonishment from my doctor to ‘DON’T EAT WHEAT YOU KNOW BETTER.’
I’m in day three, and the hives are subsiding a bit finally.
And what did I learn from this? That the reaction takes time to build up to critical point before it becomes a sudden nightmare.
Will this keep me from eating wheat in the future? If I can avoid it, yes. I’ll still bake and such for my husband, but no more yummy bread for me.
Money is tight, inflation is still rising, and it’s hard to get gluten free anything right now.
Thankfully like 90% of grocery items have no wheat in them.
And we have rice stores.
But UGH. So frustrating. I can’t decide if I’m madder at me for ignoring my better sense or the allergist for brushing me off.
