allergies

my life is full of 'em

I have nearly forty allergies. Or maybe more, I don’t know.

Allergies have become a big part of my life. I take an allergy pill every day, get allergy shots once a week, and get venom shots once a month (though I started getting them also weekly). I carry an EpiPen everywhere I go.

So I just got my allergy shots today, and I just randomly felt like writing about allergies. So here I am. Let’s talk about them. If you don’t have allergies, first off, lucky! But second, this is probably all unfamiliar to you. If you do have allergies, this will probably be a really relatable post. Either way, I hope you enjoy reading about stuff that causes me pain.

ugh, an unsplash photo of allergens *sneezes*

When I was younger, I only had one allergy: shellfish.

I can recall this one moment when I was really little, like one or two years old — this is probably my earliest memory, now that I think about it. I was sitting in a little red and blue baby chair at the dining table in the house we lived in at the time. My older sister was there eating, she was only sibling at the time, and my parents were there as well. We were eating mussels.

I watched my parents talk to each other. They weren’t quite arguing but it wasn’t a calm casual conversation. The conversation ended with my dad feeding me a mussel. The next thing I knew, I feel this like itchy, swelling-ish pain, it’s kind of hard to describe. I can still picture it in my mind, which is weird. And that’s where the memory ends.

According to my parents, after that moment, I was rushed to the ER and treated with… something. That’s when we discovered that I was like really allergic to all shellfish. Not just mussels, but shrimp, crabs, clams, oysters, lobsters, everything. I was given an EpiPen just in case I accidentally ate any shellfish again, though it wasn’t like something I had to carry around everywhere.

And for like nine years, that’s the only allergy I thought I had. Or maybe it was the only allergy I had but I ended up developing more. Either way, I discovered I had more allergies when I was about eleven years old.

It was summertime. I was at the house of a family my family had known forever. And this family had a cat who I’d always pet every time we went over to their house. I was so unsuspecting of a cat allergy because there’d been dozens of neighborhood cats at my old house.

However, that day, the cat climbed into my lap very cutely. So I pet him and he purred.

“Awwww…” I said, not knowing this beautiful animal would soon cause me much pain.

Shortly after the cat hopped off my lap and pranced away, my legs began to itch. So, I scratched them. I assumed I’d been bitten by a bug or something. The itch persisted and seemed to spread. Soon, the entire surface of both my thighs were unbearably itchy. I pulled my shorts up to reveal an overwhelming bright pink color. My thighs were all swollen and inflamed, not extremely, but to an abnormal degree.

So I ran to my mom and we went home and put anti-itch cream on my legs, which eventually helped soothe the pain. I also took some liquid allergy meds, which we had because I had “seasonal allergies.”

And so, I discovered I was allergic to cats, which I thought was a shame because I liked cats.

Two years later, I’m just playing with my little brother in our backyard, barefoot as usual. Spring is just beginning so white clovers and dandelions are popping up everywhere… and with them, come the bees.

My brother and I are walking along the grass by the side of the creek when suddenly I feel a sharp pain in my left foot like I just stepped on a nail. I wince and lift up my foot to reveal a buzzing carpenter bee. I gasp and the bee buzzes angrily at me before darting away. So I run home, scraping my foot against the grass to soothe the intense itching. When I get home, my mom gives me these weird wipes to help with bee stings, and they help the pain a bit. An hour later, my foot’s barely itchy or painful, but it’s huge! My foot had swelled up a ton and was incredibly larger than my right foot.

That night, I had soccer practice. But while I was putting cleats on, I found that I couldn’t fit my left foot into the narrow shoe. I crammed it in with all my might, but it wouldn’t go into the shoe. So I missed practice. Dang.

My foot stayed blown up for a week or so before gradually deflating to it’s normal size. Then… I just moved on with my life and paid the sting no mind.

Months later and it’s early summertime. I’m helping a friend move into his new house. We’re unloading stuff like cabinets and crates into their garage. I walk over to their trailer, pick up a wooden filing cabinet that was heavier than I expected, and lug it into the garage. But while I walk, I feel a sharp pain in my right upper thigh. After I set the cabinet down, the area feels extremely itchy, reminiscent of the cat fur itch from two years before.

I walk over to a secluded area, lift up my shorts, and see this big black stinger in my thigh. My first thought is, “Shoot, that’s going to take forever to get out!” But I shake it off for the time being and continue to help load stuff into the garage. Then I start to feel lightheaded. It comes to me in waves, each wave hitting harder than the next. I tell my friend’s mom I got stung by something and show her. She’s like, “Oh gosh!” and fetches me a Band-Aid. But as she hands it to me, I feel so faint, I manage to mumble, “I need to go to the bathroom,” and turn to the door leading into the house.

Then I black out.

It’s a strange feeling, blacking out. Your vision goes and you drift into a black void for a few moments. In those moments of unconsciousness, there are no thoughts, no feelings, nothing. It’s something that can only be described as bliss.

Then I’m awake and… on the ground?

Apparently, I’d just walked and walked into I crashed into the door and just collapsed on the ground. But I had no memory of walking at all and felt no pain from hitting the door or the concrete floor.

So my mom hurries over and drives me home. I take some allergy medicine and a hot shower. Afterward, I inspect the weird stinger. My friend’s grandfather had placed some chewing tobacco under a Band-Aid over the stinger and it had soothed most of the swelling (honest life hack, y’all), but the stinger was still there. I tried to get it out, but it wouldn’t budge. So I just left it there.

To this day, the stinger is still in my leg. It’s just chilling there right now as I’m typing up this post. Like ten months ago, my doctor told me the stinger would eventually come out of my leg on its own… welp. My mom thinks it might just be a weird skin reaction to the stinger, but I can feel it. It’s an object in my leg. Won’t it be funny in a few months when I go to the doctor’s and tell her that the stinger’s still there?? Hehehe…

Flash forward a couple of months and summer’s ending. I’m out mowing my lawn when I have to stop and move the big plastic playhouse out of the way. I move the house over by our big A/C thingamajig and think, “Hey, it looks pretty good right there.” So I’m thinking of just keeping the house where it is, but first I open the door and peek inside to see how it looks. Then, out of nowhere, this hornet zooms right into my thigh! (Dang, these stinging pests can’t get enough of my thighs XD.)

The pain is like… excruciating. It’s like INSANELY itchy but also just like physically painful in general. I hobble inside and my mom gets some other witchcrafty sting reliever, which somehow works.

This sting really annoys my mom, because she’d scheduled an allergy appointment after I fainted but you have to wait six weeks after getting stung to get tested for allergies. Well, now I got stung again so we have to wait three more months for me to get tested. Argh.

But, after six weeks, it’s finally time to get tested. But wait— guess when my appointment is? On my fourteenth birthday! Wow, what a dandy way to celebrate my oldness: getting pricked in the back hundreds of times and getting my arms injected with random allergens and venoms.

Well anyway, after a bunch of skin tests and blood tests, it turns out I’m allergic to— wait, is that right? I’m allergic to like forty things?! That’s more than my sister who I thought had like a TON of allergies!

So, the skin test confirmed that I’m like extremely allergic to every kind of stinging bug thing ever… and now I have to carry around an EpiPen everywhere because I might die if I got stung again…

“But, doctor, I didn’t die when I got stung three times before?”

“Welp… you will if you get stung again.”

“What?! How?”

“Because that’s how it works… also these venom shots and EpiPens cost a fortune so I’mma be bankin’ hehehe….”

Oh, also, those “seasonal allergies” I thought I had… are actually serious allergies! I’m allergic to all but like two types of trees in the U.S. and virtually every species of grass, weed, mold, and pollen… o.o

Not to mention… I’m allergic to dust mites, so say goodbye to quiet, dark nights because these bright, blaring air purifiers and dehumidifiers are going to keep me up all night! (I swear, these allergists are trying to make my life miserable!)

Also, my cat allergy was confirmed, but I’m also allergic to dogs?? Even though I had a dog for three years and didn’t react at all?

I’m also allergic to cockroaches and gerbils. O_O Welp.

Thankfully, though, my shellfish allergy has become very mild. Funny story, though. I took my skin test before I took my blood test. And the skin test was like, “Ayo, guess what? You’re not allergic to shellfish anymore! 🥳” And I like, “No way! Great! 😃”

So—it’s my birthday, remember—we go to Olive Garden that night and we get calamari. And me, thinking I’m not allergic anymore, eats like five pieces of breaded squid (I didn’t know squid was a shellfish… but apparently it is? And so are snails! 😱) But a few days later, my blood test results come in and I’m still allergic to shellfish…

…

Oops.

So I can touch shellfish, but I can’t eat it.

But for some reason, the calamari didn’t affect me at all sooooo… I dunno.

ah, tissues, pills, nose spray… my best friends

Anyways, those are my allergies.

It’s not actually all that bad though. Getting shots doesn’t hurt that bad anymore and I get to read at the allergist while I’m waiting. Taking medicine and carrying around an EpiPen haven’t really become hassles anymore, they’re just normal things to do.

With my birthday coming up, it’s almost been a full year since I discovered I have so many allergies¹. Allergies haven’t majorly affected my life besides becoming such a significant thing about me. My allergies come up a lot in conversations, whether someone sees my weird-looking EpiPen case or I start randomly sneezing and coughing from pollen or something.

Ultimately, I certainly don’t like my allergies. But I know that I can’t do anything about them so I’ve just accepted them. And they’re not all that bad anyway (especially since, if people ask what’s in my EpiPen case, I get to tell them drugs. Hehehee… I’m so mature).

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And that was my post about allergies! I hope you liked it. If you did, giving this post a like would mean so much. And if you want to hear more weird life posts, feel free to subscribe!

Thanks for reading what I have to say! I have no idea what to write about next… but I’m sure I’ll think of something. See ya later! :)

1. Oh, but let me make it clear, I do not have like an insane amount of allergies. I have a friend with like over 50 allergies and I knew a girl who had over 100.