allergies

it took me a few weeks to figure out that it was eggs making me feel sick.  eggs in baking, eggs in salad dressing, eggs in pancakes, etc.  as it turns out, it hasn't been too hard to cut out - overall, i just eat less dessert.  and i've had lovely friends and family who have searched out eggless caesar dressing, baked me things with flaxseed substitute, or found me recipes with no eggs at all so really, i've had just as much dessert as usual probably.  so when i went to the doctor in march and he booked the first available appointment with an allergist...at the end of august...it didn't seem SO bad as i figured out how to avoid eggs.  every so often, i would think to myself, i'm not allergic to eggs - this is stupid, eat something with eggs, and be curled up on my bed with terrible stomach pain for the next 4 - 5hours.  it seemed pretty clear that eggs were my allergy.

this past week, i finally had my appointment with the allergist.  the nurse came in to ask me questions and i talked about my eggs allergy.
her - "any other allergies?"
me - "nope."
her - "what about your parents?"
me - "my dad's allergic to nuts.  and cats.  and probably some kind of pollen... oh wait, actually, i'm really stuffed up and sneezy in the spring.  and actually, my eyes get all watery when i'm around cats..." her - "okay, so more than just an egg allergy."
me - "uh, yeah, i guess so."
i had to blow into this apparatus that tested my lung capacity, i guess.  i seemed to be really bad at it.  but i never did feel like i was doing it correctly.

next, the allergist came in.
him - "how's your nose today?
me - "good."
he looks up my nose with a light.
him - "so one nostril completely blocked and the other partially blocked is good?"
me - "umm...i guess so."
him - "two clear nostrils would be a miracle?"
me - "yeah, i guess...."
him - "you are obviously so used to being stuffed up that you are living with no good and terrible and have no idea what clear breathing would feel like."
he must have thought i was so brain-dead but this was like, total epiphany.  i'd never thought to much about being stuffed up all the time, especially in the mornings when i woke up.

so, my arms had 40 pin-pricks and 40 drops of stuff i might be allergic to based on my description of my allergy symptoms.  then i sat while the my arms got itchier and itchier.  when they wiped off the drops, i had huge welts on my arm that had "environmental allergens" and nothing on my "food allergens" arm.  my environmental arm was SO itchy.  they rate the allergies on a +1 to +4 scale with 1 being minorly allergic to 4 being severly allergic.

here were my results:
+1:
corn
banana
celery
yeast
EGGS
house dust mites
+2
wheat
sesame seed
house dust
old world mites (what?)
dogs
wet molds
+3
grasses
+4
alder
birch
cats

WHAT?  I tried to ask questions about the egg thing but i really didn't get any real answers.  he said that probably increased the allergy by eating so many eggs (i was eating a lot every morning when i was doing weight watchers) and if i cut them out completely for a couple years (!), i might be able to eat them again in small doses.  corn, wheat, bananas, etc sounds ridiculous that i'm allergic to them.  especially that they're the same or higher than eggs.  i still don't get it.  but i guess women are most susceptible to developing more severe allergies 2 - 4 years after their second pregnancy.  so he encouraged me to avoid these foods because of that but give me a break.  that's not even possible for me to avoid things like wheat and corn.  augh.  THEN, with all these pollens and grasses and dust and mold allergies...well of course!  isn't mold and dust bad for EVERYONE?  seriously - is there anyone reading my blog who has had an allergy test before?  if you have, were you allergic to dust?  augh.
he also told me that my lung capacity should be 140 (something...i can't remember the unit) and i'm breathing at 96.  exercise could help this, he explained, if i started exercising 3 times a week for 30 minutes a day.  yep...that could pretty much help EVERYTHING.

i was so frustrated on the drive home from this test.  i felt like i really didn't get any answers.  since then, however, i have been more aware of my breathing.  now, i'm just super annoyed that i'm so stuffed up instead of just being content with terrible.  so i'm suppsed to get rid of my feather duvet, put my pillow, duvet, mattress in allergen-proof encasings, wipe the blinds in my room once a week, remove carpets (but we don't have any in our room anyways), and get an air filter.  when the nurse was telling me this, i felt like saying, "maybe i should just start sweeping under my bed more often..."  haha.  and wash my curtains every month?  i'm pretty sure they've only been washed once since we moved in.  w're just going to remove those altogether.  haha.  AUGH.  also, i should stay inside and close all the windows when the grass is cut.  haha...yeah, right.

SO, i think i'll start trying to keep things less dusty in our room and i'll probably invest in some allergen-proof cases for my feather duvet (because i refuse to give it up! haha) and pillows.  my brother in law says that his ionic hepa filter is amazing and worth getting so maybe i'll look into that.  but what about EGGS?  that's what started all of this?  maybe i'll try eating something eggy this week...but there's never a good time to feel sick.  so who knows?

"so that's what happened." - allan macdonald