And This Is Why Allergies Suck

A friend got me a bag of "exotic" root veggie chips, featuring taro, parsnip, sweet potato, and batata. No carrots or tomato or rice, and the listed oils are all ones I'm fine with—great! ^_^

So yesterday morning, while working, I grabbed the bag and started munching as a snack.

After one of each chip, I had a funny taste in my mouth…and I started having a faint urge to gag—which, in itself, is highly unusual. I'll have food poisoning or the stomach flu and not even feel an urge to.

I figured the batata didn't agree with me, but which chip was the batata? That purple-striped one was the taro…

After another round of chips, the roof of my mouth felt weird and tingly. No big deal. I get weird sensation issues pretty often, so…

The tingling moved down my throat, affecting my ability to swallow, and also hopped in my arms and started creeping up towards my chest. It felt as if the nerves or muscles were misfiring or something.

Well, crap, I thought. This isn't good.

I sought my Benedryl, a task made more difficult by the effort it was taking to move my arms and fingers. I couldn't find it in my purse, so I had to stumble over to the medicine basket and find it there.

Took a chew tab, which relieved what I was feeling in my throat and stopped the progression of whatever was up with my arms. Ate something, which seemed to keep me from crashing as hard. Ultimately took another chew tab. Crashed and slept…and slept…and woke up hungry, my cat curled up against my stomach.

I've eaten and slept again, since, and I'm still weak and crabby. The reaction was closest to my reaction to carrot, and it's been quite a while since I had taro, so I can't be sure if I reacted to the batata, parsnip, or taro. I hope it's the batata. I like the other two.

Allergies suck.

But there's no fugue, and I don't feel as ill as I usually do after a bad allergy incident. Progress! ^_^

How're y'all?

—Misti

When Your Body Betrays You

I had four migraines last week. I'm still having dizzy spells.

This is despite the feverfew and sunglasses and excessive use of antihistamine. I even have a very good idea what's been causing the migraines, since I also have had severe sinus pressure and the pollen count's on the high end. (Though not actually high, which has me realizing that 10-months-of-grass-pollen South Carolina likely isn't the best place for me to live. But that's another issue.)

On the bright side, a few other (unexpected but problematic) health things are now under control or stopped altogether by a single (fortunately inexpensive) medication. So that's nice.

The health stuff is a pain, literally and figuratively. It interferes with my life, giving me less time to get anything done, and I actually dropped and broke something on Saturday. I was probably slept a good % of my work hours, last week.

Time management. This is why I like timers, to catch me when I'm distracted.

But even then, I feel as if my to-do list is growing faster than I can get it done. It's temporary, I know, and everything will get done (just maybe not as quickly as I like), and it's doable, but I'm praying to God that I can be unusually efficient, today. Because it'll make my life a lot easier if I can tune out the raw throat and ears and occasional wobble of the room.

Again, doable, but I'm getting so frustrated about it that I'm having trouble doing it.

But the problems aren't even serious, really. Just a bunch of little things that affect my life and that I have to cope with.

And they can be coped with or treated. It's just a matter of figuring out that treatment. Pau d'arco, for example, is helping with the remaining allergies. (Just realized that I forgot to put some lemon juice in the last batch. I'll have to fix that.)

That puts me at an advantage over many people, and many writers have health problems that make it difficult to have other work. Poor Holly Lisle has essentially untreatable virtigo and migraines. Kristine Kathryn Rusch and her husband, Dean Wesley Smith, have health issues of their own.

In a sense, the nature of writing and other creative industries can suit those of us with unsteady health. It gives us the ability to flex with the bad days, while also giving us material and incentive to take advantage of on the good days.

But the thing about bad days…they really make you appreciate the good ones more. I suspect that Scripture writer Paul's "thorn in the flesh" (II Cor 12:7–9) is much of why he accomplished so much.

And to look at me, you often wouldn't even think me sick at all. Likely a mite strange, if you caught me at a time when I was wearing sunglasses indoors, but I look healthy. Enviably so, with how little I am (in bone, height, and weight). A good friend of mine has neurofibromitosis (NF), a condition that means a bunch of benign tumors are growing throughout her body. Another good friend knows her, knows she has NF, knows what NF is…and actually didn't realize that meant she had those tumors before I pointed it out. (Which cleared some things up.)

There are so many people with essentially "invisible" thorns in their flesh, where people ridicule them, call them lazy, harass them because they look fine. If you don't know what you're seeing. Or if you are looking at the wrong things.

(I have a fast metabolism, and one of my friends fights anorexia. Our "enviable" thinness is actually a bad sign. Fortunately, we know other people who are aware of that and comment when we've lost weight, so we can promptly seek to put it back on. There is a reason my MCs are often on the too-thin side…)

If you're such a person—or if you want to better understand such deceptively healthy-looking people, check out ButYouDon'tLookSick, a website and community developed by such people, for such people. Because we need support, sometimes.

(I'm so allergic to strawberries that I react just from trace amounts in the air. Sadly, many people can know but not actually realize that until they bring a strawberry salad somewhere I am and, without even seeing the strawberries, I'm promptly running out the door into the grass-filled outside (which I'm also highly allergic to, but better to risk a migraine than to be unable to breathe).

One benefit to attending a small church with a lot of folks with allergies: Enough people understand, know, and remember enough about my allergies to give me heads-up. ("Don't go downstairs to the potluck! I'll make you a plate. You can have taco, right, as long as I make sure there's no tomato?" [And don't ask me how these people remember. There are so many allergies in my small church, that if you make anything, at least one person in the church can't eat it. That includes the Communion bread.])

In any event, I try to look at it as evidence of how we're all different. God made me (and everyone else) the way He did for a reason. At least it gives me good fodder to mine when writing my stories, to try to make sure my characters have a variety of issues and strengths.

Are there health issues, visible or invisible, that you suffer from, fear, respect? Are you familiar with ButYouDon'tLookSick?

—Misti

Of Allergies and Medical Care

Latex.

You've probably heard of—or know someone with—horrific allergies to latex, some involving seizures. It's like peanuts: Some folks are insanely sensitive. (I know someone who has an unusually bad reaction to both, actually, among other things.)

There are entire medical facilities, now, that are latex-free. That's due to people who can't even handle trace amounts of latex in the air, like I react to strawberries. (And the protein that people usually react to in strawberries is also found in latex and other things, but evidently that's not what I react to in strawberries.)

What do those latex-free facilities use? Nitrile. Unless they're one of the extremely rare facilities where 1. a nurse has developed an allergy and 2. the administration believes the nurse about that allergy (which is uncommon, because folks dislike admitting that fixing one problem has only caused another).

Problem #1: Most medical practitioners don't even know that the gloves they're using are nitrile.

Problem #2: Nitrile gloves are now following the pattern of latex ones, wherein first some nurses started developing allergies; then with the common usage, medical personnel started claiming the gloves harmed them; then the administrators insisted the allergy was due to the powder in the gloves—complicated by the detail that the administrators were sometimes correct; and gradually the genuinely allergic medical personnel proved that no, they weren't idiots.

Problem #3: That pattern probably has a good decade or more before it plays out, as far as nitrile is concerned.

Problem #4: The other alternative, vinyl, will doubtless follow the same pattern when it gets popular.

Problem #5: A patient carrying his or her own gloves for medical personnel to use is a risk, both for the personnel—who can't be sure the gloves are medical grade—and for fellow patients—who could have a hypersensitivity to the rubber the glove-carrier has.

Okay, so I carry a mini box (unopened) of medical-grade vinyl gloves in my purse, marked on all sides with "ICE", with my allergy also listed in my phone. But I'm well aware that, in case of an emergency that renders me unconscious, I'll probably wake up after medical personnel are wondering what's making my skin flake off like dried glue.

I haven't heard of anyone yet with a hypersensitivity to vinyl, though I'm sure they exist. I just pray I don't meet that person.

People allergic to cleaners and soaps also have issues with medical care. After those issues I mentioned that I have with standard, over-the-counter soap, imagine what happens when I encounter that tough antibacterial soap that's in every hospitals (which was a stupid move, biologically speaking—they at least should have switched out antibacterial types every month or week to keep them effective, rather than killing off all the bacteria they worked on so only the resistant strains remained to breed).

Yeah. Not fun.

Then there's the other type of allergies, probably the most common type: allergies to medicines. I'm allergic to acetaminophen. My mother has to avoid aspirin (and might be allergic to acetaminophen, too). My brother's allergic to penicillin and sulfa and all related medications. One of my friends can't have ibuprofen.

Someone once told me about a time when she went to the doctor for pain. She had symptoms of an allergy to the acetaminophen-based medicine they gave her, so they gave her yet another acetaminophen-based medicine—not once, but twice!

Seriously. I can't help but wonder what those medical personnel were thinking. "Hey, she's evidently allergic to this one, so let's give her a related medicine!" (What…the…[expletive deleted].)

I mean, I'm careful to track down my painkiller herbs to see what medicines they're related to, and I clearly mark that on my bag. I will never give my mother white willow bark or meadowsweet root, because both contain a chemical that's in aspirin. If she wants to try it on her own, fine. But I won't hand it to her.

I'll even ask if someone's allergic to fish before I hand 'em something with GMO corn, though it's highly unlikely that someone allergic to fish will be allergic to the specific plasmid that was taken from a fish and put into corn. Just in case.

But that's the weird thing about hospitals. It's frightening how often I have to repeat my allergies to medical personnel who are supposed to know to take these things seriously. I've been patronized, all but called a hypochondriac, asked how I know I'm allergic to something (in a disbelieving way, not a curious one)…

My mother once happened to be me once to witness a nurse's passive-aggressive, "I have to open these expensive surgical gloves." Mom was appalled, more so when I shrugged and found the comment mild.

To be fair, I do know doctors and nurses who actually listen and like my scientific approach to my symptoms and their causes. (Not uncommon: Walking into the doctor's office with a list of symptoms to hand the doctor, including potential causes for problems I already know I'm having.) And those folks are often appalled themselves when I thank them for not being condescending.

And I must admit that one of the two times I was poisoned after a surgery seems to have been caused by the hospital mixing up my prescription with someone else's. (The other case was an example of Murphy's Law. I can only guess that the surgeon was having a bad few months, because I've been told by nurses who've worked with him that he's very competent in surgery, he was a bit snappish when his one nurse displayed potential incompetence in front of him—and she also screwed up my allergy list on my medical file. Correcting that took a good five minutes of arguing.)

Allergies to medicines can effect people (and characters) in interesting ways. Did you know penicillin is bread mold? Imagine how that affects people who are hungry and only have moldy bread to eat. Eat the bread and suffer from the allergy—which can be debilitating or life-threatening—or not eat it and starve—which can also be life-threatening?

But food allergies—and how long I think I'd last in case of an apocalypse—are a topic for another day.

Do you have any allergies that affect your medical care? Have you known anyone with severe medical allergies? Have you read or written any characters with medical allergies?

—Misti

Of Tea and Toothpaste: Allergies to Sweeteners and Herbs

To continue my mini-series of how different allergies can affect everyday life, last week I covered some basic contact allergies. I also asked if anybody could think of an allergy I'd mentioned before that would affect my ability to use toothpaste and drink tea.

Nobody did, but no biggie. My own mother loses track of my allergies. (Yeah, that can get fun when she hands me food.)

I was thinking of stevia. Gives me headaches.

Stevia is both a sweetener and an herb, but reactions to sweeteners are actually fairly common, particularly to artificial ones. There's a reason anything with aspartame has a warning on it, and it's not that one of the byproducts if formaldehyde. There's a disorder wherein people can't break down phenylalanine. It can cause neural issues like seizures and mental retardation.

The odd-ish thing about that? All chemical sweeteners have molecular structures that are odd to the body and don't necessarily digest (and there are some studies showing correlation between artificial sweeteners and obesity + cancers, which suggests causation). So poor aspartame is singled out for the terrible side effects it has on that minority of the population, while the other artificial sweeteners are ignored.

(I've read before—but I don't know how verified it is—that when you taste sweet, your body tells your brain, "Prepare to store calories," so if you don't get them, your body still wants them and it may even make stuff to store. That might just be a theory for why some studies have shown correlation between obesity and artificial sweeteners.)

Granted, I still avoid eating aspartame, but that's because I don't want formaldehyde in my body. Sugar, honey, agave—I'll eat those over the others, any day. And I'm working on getting corn syrup (with its many name variants) out of my diet, because my insulin's wonky enough and I don't need that adding to it. ("Corn syrup" is a misnomer, and though it doesn't affect your blood sugar right away, it affects spikes your blood sugar higher than table sugar after your body's done digesting what you ate. Thus why some folks call soda pop "Diabetes in a can.")

Okay, to get back on topic of allergies, what does all this about sweetener have to do with allergies? ^_^

Sweeteners are in everything. Baked beans, cheese, chicken nuggets, canned asparagus—if you eat it, the major brands probably have sweeteners added. Because sugar's nicely addicting like that, encouraging you to come back for more—and it can act as a preservative, too.

Xylitol's in most gum and toothpaste. Stevia's often in tea blends. Food usually has some form of sugar or corn syrup added—unless it's natural, in which case the added sweetener is more likely to be stevia or brown rice syrup. (And remember my rice intolerance? Makes it hard for me to find "all-natural" pre-made foods I can eat.)

So anybody allergic to a sweetener—and I've known people allergic to Splenda and others—has to be careful with what they consume, reading labels for particular families of foods…

And then there are the exceptions, which can get more common as different sweeteners get chic and other ones lose popularity. If you're allergic to a sweetener and you don't read every label, you'll probably end up blindsided sometime and wondering why on earth you have a headache. (Oh, toothpaste, I hate you.)

Now, imagine you were allergic to peppermint. Or cinnamon. (I once knew someone allergic to cinnamon and nutmeg.) Or to the most popular flavor where you live.

If you eat it, somebody's allergic.

Technically, you could even be intolerant to a food and not realize it. I'm a chatterbox, and I've discovered that a fair number of people have symptoms of a food intolerance and don't know that's what it is. Some people just think "My stomach hurts all the time" or "Sometimes" or "Sometimes my digestion's really screwed up".

For girls in particular, those things can happen due to hormones, but they can also be due to food sensitivities—and you can be sensitive to a food in one form and not in another. My brother can't have cooked cabbage, but he can eat raw cabbage just fine, though it's harder to digest.

My own mother, no stranger to allergies and intolerances and such, had symptoms of being allergic to Lortab and didn't realize it until I pointed out, "Er… Mom? What you're describing as your reaction to Lortab is how my Tylenol allergy started." (Tylenol is in Lortab.)

So don't assume you have no allergies or intolerances or sensitivities. You won't be doing yourself any favors—though if you have as limited a diet as I've heard the average person does, you may not ever encounter anything you react to.

Do you ever read the labels in what you eat? What's your sweetener of choice?

—Misti

Allergies around the House

As I mentioned back in my post about allergies (and how they can apply to fiction), there are several types of allergies. Let's focus on what life's like for someone with contact allergies or contact dermatitis.

Reactions can range from itchiness or rashes to skin blistering and peeling off. Not everyone will have all types, but once you have one allergy, you're likely to have or develop more.

Someone's sensitivity to an allergen will also vary, though it'll probably get worse with repeated exposure, depending on if it's more of an allergy (antihistamine reaction) or an intolerance (body can't process it). Intolerances tend to get worse if you don't let yourself heal in-between exposures, but you can expose yourself, heal up, and expose yourself again—the reaction probably won't be any worse. Allergies, on the other hand, tend to get worse with repeated exposure.

So, what does all this mean on a practical level, either for worrying about friends' allergies or for creating a character with an allergy?

Since I have pretty much every type of skin reaction you can think of, I'll be using myself as a case study to demonstrate three types of reactions and what I have to do about it. (Short version: I read pretty much every label, and I usually end up regretting it when I don't.)

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Case 1:

Trigger: most cleaning agents, including antibacterial handsoap. (Non-antibacterial handsoap can bother me, too, but not as much.)

Reaction: My skin gets thin to the point of touching stuff hurts. By the time it reaches the "painful to the touch" stage, it's also red and blotchy.

Degree of sensitivity: Medium
antibacterial soap: >1x every other day = too much; other soap: >1x in an hour or three = too much.

How this affects life: Obviously, I have to wash my hands. So I buy mild, non-antibacterial soap, and I wear vinyl gloves when cleaning or when performing messy cooking tasks. I also frequently treat my hands with oil (I like argan) or lotion (Desert Essence organics).

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Case 2:

Trigger: tea tree oil. (My mother is castor oil.)

Reaction: skin blisters and peels off

Degree of sensitivity: Medium-high
If I touch even a small amount, I must immediately wash it off.

How this affects life: If something has "natural" on the label, I read it carefully. Chances are, it'll have tea tree oil. (I also watch for castor oil in the soaps I buy, so I don't hurt my mother.)

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Case 3:

Trigger: berries (strawberries or raspberries) and some flowers

Reaction: rash (and with strawberries, trouble breathing)—if the soap uses natural ingredients

Degree of sensitivity: High
Can't touch most of them, and some I react to smelling.

How this affects life: I have to check the soaps at friends' houses before I do something that'll need me to wash my hands. I also have to be careful about the scents in my own soaps, lotions, body wax, etc. (I'll generally go for "fragrance free" or a scent like tea or cinnamon.)

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So there you go—three examples of how a skin reaction can affect your everyday life.

I'm thinking next week, I might talk about allergies in regards toothpaste and tea. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what can often be in both? I've mentioned the allergy before.

Do you know anyone who seems to read all soap labels before touching them? Can you think of a character you've read or written with a skin allergy? Do you think it's something you might like to play with?

—Misti