My God-Awful Summer

So for my first real, non-introductory, post, I'm going to tell you about the worst summer of my life. It was the beginning of the summer of 2007, I was about 9. I had recently been getting strange stomach aches almost every single day and eventually my mom made an appointment at Children's Hospital. First, they put me through a test for diabetes. For those of you who don't know what this involves, it's basically drinking a full cup of, to me, melted gummy bears. The down-side to this was that, if you threw up, you had to do the whole process over again. Oh, and did i mention that all of this was on an empty stomach?! I threw up. But i begged my mother not to make me do it again so eventually the doctor gave in and let me go free. Over the next few weeks i had other appointments. One was a scratch test, this test is when they put several oils of different nuts (or other allergens) onto a board of small, sharp pyramids. For me, they tested tree-nuts (which we already knew i was allergic to, so there was NO point). Every single spot lit up and flamed red. My arm was so itchy, but of course, "No scratching allowed dear" was all i heard. Eventually, after i left the hospital, the area where they tested walnuts turned into a painful, raised bruise. This bruise stayed for about a week. So after all of these tests, like i was some sort of lab rat, the doctors were stumped. Apparently being stumped and not knowing what to do in their minds means "take her off of every food that makes life enjoyable and lets ruin her summer." Without doing any more tests, the doctors told me what i could no longer eat until later tests, here is said list:
Tree-nuts
Peanuts
Milk
Wheat
Mango
Sesame Seeds
Now most these food items were what made life with a life-threatening food allergy tolerable because it was still easy to find foods that i could eat. Now, though, i could barely eat anything. Throughout the whole summer i ate rice-cakes and scrambled eggs (two things that i can no longer tolerate eating after that summer). I could no longer go to my friends houses because they didn't have any of the food i could eat and i could no longer go to any sort of restaurant. I was stuck inside my house all summer because the doctors wanted to cover their asses. I lost a ton of weight and became unhealthily skinny. Near the end of the summer, my mother became worried about my health and decided to go in to talk to the doctors again. My stomach aches had gone away but i refused to accept that taking away any of the foods that they took me off of resulted in this. When i went in again, the doctors did more tests! This time, however, they actually got somewhere. They didn't test for any sort of allergy this time, but tested for something wrong with me on the inside. After several blood-tests they discovered that i had (prepare yourself for this one) Hashimoto's Hyper-Thyroiditis. This sounds pretty freaking scary now doesn't it. It means that my thyroid has basically been tiring itself out and will eventually lose function, resulting in me becoming depressed and over-weight. Overall, this was the "cherry on top," as some would say, to my god-awful summer. I was put back onto the foods that the doctors had forbidden me from at the beginning of the school year, but it was far too late. My summer had already been categorized in my mind as the worst summer of my life.

Introduction

Having food allergies sucks, whether they're life-threatening or not. For those who have them, it's a difficult adjustment when it comes to being a teenager. There's peer pressure, the desire to just be like everyone else, and the hope that one day the allergies will just disappear. For some with lesser allergies, they can go away with age, but for others, like me, they will never go away, no matter how much time passes. This blog is to share my stories (I'll be posting every Sunday) and for others to share theirs about the pro's and the con's of having allergies. I hope those who read this gain insight to my life with life-threatening allergies and are willing to share their own stories. Allergies suck. Hopefully this blog can lighten the load!