Food that fights back

Several years ago, I had a horrible allergy that left me with a nasty rash all over my body. So nasty in fact that even a day after I still had the rash, so I figured I would go consult an allergologist. She told me I had to go on an elimination diet to 'eliminate' any possible allergens from my body. A week (and five less pounds) later, I went back to my allergologist so that she could administer a skin test to see what I am allergic to. During the skin test, the doc exposes a portion of your skin to a variety of allergens. You are then instructed to wait for about 15 minutes and to NOT touch your arm at all.

As I sat outside her office while she talked to another patient, I started that section of my arm turn red. Not a good sign. Even worse, when I went back into my doc's office and showed her my arm, she had a look of concern and asked me if I scratched my arm. Of course I did not, but upon hearing her say that I knew I was in trouble.

Turns out I am allergic to the following: most non-fish seafood (like shrimps, crabs, lobsters, squid, clams, and mussels), anchovies, another type of fish, chicken, eggs, mangoes, mango trees, acacia trees, and talahib, among a lot of others. The doctor then gave me a list of all my allergies and for the next several weeks, I stayed away from all those.

However, I wasn't always allergic (I don't ever recall reacting negatively to mangoes for instance). So after a while I started trying out small amounts of each of those items, and at some point I realized I 'lost' my allergies. So at that point I no longer stayed away from anything. I did notice, however, that since then, I would always end up having rashes if I ingested shrimp heads (yeah I know, only the head, weird), crabs, and bagoong.

Now recently, I think that for some reason my allergy to seafood has come back. I was in Singapore recently and had some chili and white pepper crab, and that night, I had a bit of a rash, and the next day I had a small rash on my upper lip that stayed on for a couple of days til it caused my lip to get busted. Shortly after that, I had some kare-kare with bagoong, and almost as soon as I ate the bagoong I could feel my lips starting to swell. And just yesterday, I had some seafood pasta and a clam from seafood chowder, and I got the same reaction I got from the bagoong.

I recall my allergologist telling me that it is possible to have allergies that only appear during certain times of your life, and it may be brought about by a variety of things. Now over the last several months, my stress level has been higher than I have ever recalled it to be, due to so many things happening on so many areas of my life. I am guessing that the stress may be partly to blame for the return of my allergies.

So not only do the tough exoskeletons of these seafoods coz some level of grief when eating them, but now they even leave a rash and even some swelling. Great. Oh well, I guess maybe when I am no longer as stressed as I am now, my allergy may decide to go on another indefinitely long hibernation period. Just hope that happens sooner rather than later.

Oh and yeah, I never ever thought I would use the word 'exoskeleton' in a blog post.