Allergy delight

Last night I was treated to a Thai meal at a nice restaurant near my home. I tucked into the starter with gusto, dipping my prawn toast in sweet chilli sauce and nibbling the lettuce garnish. Then onto the main course; huge mounds of egg fried rice, vegetables with beef or prawns. Delicious! I dug in greedily and quickly polished off a plate with a little of everything before I started feeling a bit odd. My tongue felt a little ‘strange’, almost like it was developing a life of its own. I stuck my tongue out to show my dinner date who screwed up his face in distaste and suggested I go and look at it myself in the Ladies. Off I trotted with a knot on concern growing in my belly – my tongue was feeling VERY odd by this time. I quickly locked myself in and stuck my tongue out as far as it would go in order to inspect it fully in the little mirror and poor lighting.

It looked like parts of it had literally melted away! There were odd craters where my tongue used to live! At the back of my throat you could see massive red lumps rising. (I should have taken photos to scare people with.) The knot of fear tightened, after all how much would everything swell up?

Fortunately after about 30 minutes it started going down again. My only conclusion is that perhaps I had prawns or peanuts that set it off. This adds to the list of foods I now need to avoid: dairy, strawberries and now shell-fish. Plus, my delightful and sadly regular mosquito-bite swellings problem and a growing number of allergies to make-up/beauty products. All of my favourite things! Perhaps I should just give up and live off potatoes and water. It would make things more straightforward.

Hopefully a little visit to a specialist will sort out anything else I need to stop trying to eat. It’s so depressing. I am going to become one of those people who goes out to eat and sits there saying “oh, I can’t eat that as it contains x”. Those kind of people annoy me and now I am joining the club.