By Steven Neil
The first time I saw my allergist was on a late Friday afternoon, and I was with her for over an hour and a half. She asked a lot of questions about my symptoms, the medicines I was taking, and took the time to listen to me. During our discussion, we scheduled several tests, including food allergies, common allergies, and asthma. Seeing an allergist was one of the best choices I have ever made.
My allergist was especially concerned about the problem I was having with my lips and tongue going numb along with choking. I had begun to choke when taking my pills and eating certain foods. Then liquids began to trouble me, and finally, I was choking without eating or drinking anything. My allergist prescribed an Epi-Pen that I now carry everywhere.
It was later that same Friday evening, about 7 PM, when I got a telephone call from her, and she told me I needed to stop taking the blood pressure medicine, Losartan, I had started a few weeks ago.
Losartan is known to cause a dry cough, and for most people, that is about the only real problem they have from it. I had a dry cough, and it was getting much worse. But it can also cause numbness and tingling in your lips. From the way she described it, Losartan was causing my lips to turn numb, and that was affecting my throat muscles, causing me to choke. The increased frequency of my episodes meant that my body’s reaction to the medicine was getting worse and could turn fatal. Needless to say, I stopped taking Losartan that day. Since that time, my regular doctor had prescribed five different blood pressure medicines before settling on the one I use now because I had severe reactions to all the other ones I tried.
Though I continued to have problems with my lips going numb (which I still have today), it did not take long before the bouts of choking started to ease off.
The following Thursday, I went into the allergy clinic for my food allergy tests. The results were extremely eye-opening. I learned that I am allergic to at least twenty-five foods, including:
1. Apples
2. Barley
3. Beef
4. Bell Peppers
5. Cacao (Chocolate)
6. Cantaloupes
7. Carrots
8. Celery
9. Chicken
10. Clams
11. Corn
12. Crab
13. Goat’s Milk
14. Grapes
15. Lettuce
16. Milk
17. Pears
18. Potatoes
19. Rice
20. Shrimp
21. Sweet Potatoes
22. Tomatoes
23. Tree Nuts
24. Tuna Fish
25. Vanilla
I knew as soon as I saw that list that my life was going to drastically change if I was going to begin to live a semi-normal life again. Gone were the days of a Big Mac, Whopper, or fried chicken. No more potato chips, French fries, chocolate, spaghetti, lasagna, ice cream, tortilla chips, popcorn, and cappuccinos. While I was not a big meat eater, I did eat small quantities of pork, beef, and chicken regularly. Even tomatoes and apples are more or less off-limits now. Changing my diet to fit these new restrictions was going to be as challenging as it had been to adapt to my chemical allergies.
It was at this time that I began to compare having extensive allergies to being trapped in a maze . It’s easy to get lost in despair because you can no longer enjoy so many things ordinary people take for granted. Because there is no way to determine everything you are allergic to, you are always on edge when eating or drinking things you did not prepare.
Beef, chocolate, chicken, apples, tomatoes, and tree nuts are straight forward enough to look for, but dairy, barley, and corn are a different maze to explore. In my next segment, I will begin to go over just how difficult it is to find out what is in our food and how difficult it is to avoid certain items when eating processed foods.