Why I’m Blogging (And Why I Can)

I remember my mother proudly telling her sister that one of her three kids didn’t have any allergies, none at all! Her other two got hit with the allergies bad, right from birth. When her son was about five, she bought him a whole Guinea pig setup, the cage, the food, the pig, the whole nine yards, only to have the animal for a day or so before having to give it up when she discovered he was covered in hives. Allergies are run-of-the-mill in my family, everyone has them. My cousin had to use her nebulizer nightly, my sister can’t ride horses, my uncle can’t go near a bunny, yet somehow I managed to avoid it.

Or so I thought.

My allergies hit me like a bus when I turned twelve.

Puberty man.

My mom’s golden child is now the worst of them all. As far as I know, that means only my cousin David made it to adulthood unscathed, lucky stiff. When I say my allergies hit me like a bus, I mean they hit FAST and HARD. When I dig into the depths of my memory (who can really remember middle school?) I think I only suffered from my allergies for about a year before going to an allergist to get that lovely allergy test and starting allergy shots. That means that from about sixth grade through high school, I was getting six shots a week, then three, then three every couple weeks. I can go into more depth on the shots later, but long story short my body couldn’t handle six shots a week for very long.

The shots helped. My prime example is that I couldn’t hug my cat-owning friends without suffering the consequences before the shots but after, I could at least do that. However as expected, my allergies didn’t go away completely. Oh no. I was the weirdo kid who always had a stash of tissues in her backpack. I used to see kids leave the classroom to blow their nose and think, “seriously?? If I did that I’d miss half of every lecture!” I got pretty good at ignoring what the other kids in the class must have thought about me and my backpack-turned tissue trashcan.

Fast-forward, I head off to college and I can’t take my shots with me. I’m now down to two methods of dealing with my allergies. 1: drugs. 2: deal with it. My most frequent drug of choice is Claritin, however I tried many, many different kinds. Should I have an attack I’d turn to ibuprofen, Sudafed, then usually I’d just have to leave whatever I’m doing and go home and shower.

Fast-forward again and I’ve graduated! Woohoo! My allergies are just as prominent as ever though, so that stinks. But a couple of weeks ago I discovered something that I wish I’d discovered YEARS ago. That, or I wish I’d never discovered it at all. I was with my mom, sister-in-law, and aunt as we did our yearly dog photoshoot. Yup, that’s something we do.

Yearly.

My mother and aunt used to take pictures of all of my grandmother’s grandchildren to make a calendar for her every year, but as we got older, apparently we got less cute and the dogs got cuter. Anyway, it was at that photoshoot where I was dying (allergy attack, “dying” is usually pretty accurate) because of bunnies and dust bunnies (ha) and my aunt asked, “have you ever tried going gluten-free?” I wondered how the heck that would help my allergies, I don’t have any food allergies. As if reading my mind, she said, “I don’t know if gluten-free is the answer, but maybe something having to do with food?” She had recently gotten into holistic healing for her dogs and had done hours and hours of research on gut flora, so I wondered if she was onto something.

Here comes the “why” of this blog. I learned about histamine intolerance, which I will explain in crazy depth in another post since this post is getting a little long-winded. Basically, finding out my potential histamine intolerance requires me to control my diet and I’m hoping this blog will keep me honest.

Plus, if I can help any other allergy-sufferers out there, I will consider mine a life well lived.

So that’s a very brief overview of my life in terms of my allergies. I never wanted to blog about anything I know nothing about, but I think my life of living what I’m blogging about gives me some credibility… and hey, might as well have something good come of something that has done me so much wrong, right?