Eating a virus

[OakLeaf]

I had immunotherapy right after I had the reaction to the sting. Then about the time I finished it, the Powers that Be declared that the old mixed hymenoptera shots were ineffective. I've been stung many times by many different things and only had the reaction once, but I was stung in the face and didn't actually see what it was.

Same with whatever it is that I ate... when I had the worst reaction, I thought it was aspirin, but then I ate twice more at the same restaurant and broke out in a prickly rash all over - enough to make me go park outside the ER until it was over, but not enough to go inside. So I think it was either some odd ingredient they were using, or some kind of contaminant, but again I don't know what. Haven't taken aspirin since then, but I'm actually thinking I'll go park outside the ER and challenge that sometime soon, since there are so many health benefits to low dose aspirin.

I do take shots for my inhalant allergies, and I TOTALLY swear by immunotherapy. Nothing, nothing, nothing has improved the quality of my life so much as those shots (plus identifying and managing my food allergies). Used to be I couldn't even function for two or three weeks in late summer (weeds and molds), and suffered all year round with allergies to one thing or another.

But I haven't had good luck with developing a tolerance the way some people do. I'm a lot less sensitive to certain things than I used to be, and there was one mold that I didn't react to at all the last time I was tested, but everything else (of the 20 or so inhalants in my shots) I still react to. I was on sublingual drops for my food allergies for a while, but the allergist's office themselves admitted that immunotherapy for food allergies isn't usually very effective, and it didn't seem to do much for me.

But in any case, I'll continue to carry the Epi-Pen even though I've never had to use it. The way my allergist explained it, developing an allergy is like walking off a cliff... with each "step" (exposure) you get closer to the edge, but nothing seems any different until you fall. Specific allergies develop via exposure, but the immune dysfunction that causes them "lives" in your immune system, so I could develop an allergy to something else. I just figure it's a stupid thing to die of for want of a $50 prescription (reimbursed by insurance).