Allergies

So I have lived my whole life as one of those people with food allergies. Chocolate and shell fish. Since I've been a small child, I've had to watch out for these items. This means both Halloween and Easter sucked. The most chocolate I ever got was the black-coated Reese's Pieces; for Easter, it was white chocolate as the only option. What it also means is that every buffet style gathering - family parties, weddings, trade show events, etc. - I had to diligently stick to a couple of the items that I knew were safe from crab or shrimp contamination. When you live your whole life like this, it becomes a core part of who you are. Sometimes there's jealousy when you watch other people dig into various dishes or savor over desserts, but early on you develop a defense mechanism to deal with it. Shell fish are scavengers -- it's like eating seagull or rat. Chocolate makes you fat and gives you zits. Good riddance to both.

One more issue is that my wife is allergic to nuts. She ended up in the hospital in anaphylactic shock, ready to die without adrenaline. She carries adrenaline wherever she goes and avoided eating in a restaurant or even anyone else's cooking for nearly a decade. So I know the severe side too. The kicker here is that if both parents have food allergies, there's a 60% chance your child will have them too. So we were diligent with both our children. No wheat until 9 months. No milk until a year. No egg until 18 months. No nuts until 3. Watchful. Ever alert to what they might reach or someone else might offer them unknowingly.

We just took our girl down for her 3-year-old skin test, and she passed with flying colors like her brother did 2 1/2 years ago. Phew. We dodged that 60% bullet twice. We had actually considered not having kids for a while because we both knew what life was like as a person living with food allergies.

While we were there, I had myself tested too.

Negative.

For 5 different kinds of shell fish and for chocolate.

It's like living your life as a blind man then waking up one day and realizing your hat was just too big.

This has spawned a lot of thinking back, tracing down how it was that I was assumed to be allergic to chocolate and shell fish. When I was about 5 at Newark Days in the Mall at UofD, I think I had a brownie. I think I ended up in the emergency room with a swollen eye. But I don't know if I was ever actually tested for a chocolate allergy. And talking to an expert today, I found out that almost no one is actually allergic to chocolate. Many people will react to something in the chocolate, but they're not allergic to the cocoa itself, or to chocolate specifically. Then when I was 7 and we were house-hunting, we stopped at a Howard Johnsons somewhere (not our regular HoJos). My father had the all-you-can-eat fried clams, while my brother and I had whatever kid's meal (hot dogs?) with fries. Hours later while looking at a new-construction model, I was sick to my stomach. The catch was that the water wasn't on, so it made for an awkward time throwing up in this model home. The story is that I must have got into some of my father's fried clams. But how likely is that, really? I certainly wouldn't have dived into them, and I'm sure I'd have noticed the difference between that and a french fry. Isn't it much more likely that I got a bad hot dog? Or was wound up from house shopping all day that I had an upset stomach? Why did it jump right to "shell fish allergy"? I don't recall being tested after that event.

Now, I did and do have environmental allergies -- cut grass and cats come to mind. I got allergy shots for years. But cats still can bother me, and freshly mowed lawns make me sneeze. I may have tested positive for mold too. I don't recall when exactly, but I had slowly introduced chocolate into my diet since college. Never in large quantities, but enough that I began to convince myself that I probably wasn't really allergic. At least not violently. Similarly but accidentally, once I ate half a shrimp egg roll in college and also had many spoonfuls of Maryland crab soup. (Both were delicious, and I only found out what they were because each time I commented 'wow, this is great!' which prompted further investigation.)

Maybe I "grew out" of these allergies? But that's not likely either. The kinds of allergies one grows out of are like wheat and milk as an infant. Then they grow out of them by 3 or 4 years of age. A 7 year old doesn't grow out of a shell fish allergy. And as I mentioned before, it's unlikely I was ever allergic to chocolate.

I will be in Tampa next week for a trade show. I'm looking forward to trying out some shell fish and see what I've been missing the last 30 years. At least the last couple Halloweens have been better, but I'll still stick to jellybeans on Easter. Oh, and our kids only ever had a 30% chance, not 60%, which probably would have changed their early lives too. But at least they won't have 30 years of constant diligence and missed enjoyment to worry about.