The Reality of Being Allergic
I have had to deal with allergies my whole life. My parents discovered that I was allergic when they decided to feed me a toast with some peanut butter on top when I was a child. I started to have respiratory difficulties and I started to have a lot of red spots all over my body. They called the ambulance and, obviously, the story ended positively.
The doctors at the hospital ran their tests to see what I was allergic to. From those tests, they concluded that I was allergic to five things: peanuts, nuts, seafood, pineapples and kiwis. Yes, that is a lot of things to be allergic to. By the way, these tests have always been scary to me because they needed to poke little holes in your arms and it was a very unpleasant feeling.
Anyways, being allergic comes with a lot of different little things that not everyone would think about. I am going to talk about some of these things in the next section.
5 — Carrying EpiPens. EpiPens are generally what you use when you have an allergic reaction. That or Benadryls, depending on the gravity of the situation. The best-case scenario is to carry two EpiPens as well as Benadryls. Why two EpiPens? In case the first one does not work. EpiPens are not especially big, but they are big enough to feel cumbersome. Personally, I always carry one on me. I also have Benadryl pills in my wallet.
4 — Dating. Maybe this is not the most obvious one, but it is indeed a thing. When you plan to kiss someone, you got to ensure that the person did not eat any of the stuff that you are allergic to. You also need to make sure that the eating habits of thy person are aligned with yours. If the person that you are trying to date adores fish and you just so happen to be allergic to fish, It might not work out or, at the very least, some changes might need to be made.
3 — Finding restaurants. This is by far the worst part about being allergic. I never feel comfortable trying something new. I always go to the same restaurants. Whenever I hang out with friends, I always feel like I am a big weight to them when it comes to that. When I date a girl, I always run out of restaurants and it takes me forever to find a new one.
2 — Telling the waiter that you are allergic. Whenever I go somewhere, I always notify the waiter about my allergies. They usually tell me if there is a problem, but it is not always the case. A lot of restaurants separate the allergens in sections. They prepare fish in the back, they cook pastas in the front, etc. I am really scared of cross-contamination. I feel a bit better when the waiter assures me that the chef is going to be careful and change his gloves, for example.
1 — May contain label. Let us take the example of ice cream. You are at the nearest supermarket looking for a quick dessert. You decide that you want ice cream. Let us say in this case that you are allergic to nuts and peanuts. You are going to look at the back of the product to read the list of ingredients. Suddenly, it appears as though there is a little sentence that says: “may contain nuts and peanuts.” What are you supposed to do?
A lot of companies put that on the label of their products to protect themselves. You never really want to take chances when it comes to allergies. Even if you know that there is probably no problem, you never know. This prevents you from eating a lot of desserts. A positive note, some companies are going to put a “[allergen] free” label on their products indicating that there should not be any problem.
You can lose allergies. As of today, I am only allergic to seafood. That is right, I lost some of my allergies. Even though I am not allergic to nuts and peanuts anymore, I do not eat them. I do not feel comfortable eating them because I have never eaten them in my whole life. What is awesome about the fact that I am not allergic anymore is the fact that I have access to a lot more desserts. I do not need to be careful about the may contain label now.
You can develop some allergies. My brother recently figured out that he was allergic to nuts. He had no problem with them before. One night he got an allergic reaction and he needed to say goodbye to nuts.
Let us end this article on a positive note! Nowadays, there is something called “allergic desensitization.” You basically must go to sessions where they are going to give you little doses of the allergen in question. With time, you are going to be able to control your symptoms more.
Being allergic often sucks, but it is not the end of the world. You can thrive just like anybody else!
