allergies

The other day I found out that I’m allergic to basil. Not in a peanut allergy, drop dead kind of way, but still! That’s like being told you’re allergic to puppies or Oprah. I mean what did basil ever do to anybody besides inspire the invention of pesto and be delicious?

Apparently, for me it was symptom-less. Sneaky. On the sly, late at night, it caused gut inflammation that only some fancy blood test dared reveal. And as we’ve all been brainwashed into knowing, inflammation is the leading cause of evil in the world. You may have thought is was global warming or Alex Jones, but I’m here to tell you—it’s inflammation. 

Inflammation has other talents too, it masquerades as belly fat and belly fat not only causes your pants to fit tight in the waist but baggy AF in the ass (which can make the jean-buying experience even more harrowing than it already is, and causes a serious slide toward elastic waisted yoga pants)—it is a precursor to heart disease because let’s get real here—the heart is a drama queen that can’t be ignored, even for a second, lest it suck all the oxygen out of the room. (Sarcasm intended.)

I’m heartbroken that in order for my heart to mind its own business and my pants to fit properly I’ll have to live a Caprese salad, pesto free life. But I’ll live. And the next time I go to Italy none of this will count. 

Next on the list was soy, but that one I understood perfectly!

In most bodies soy just turns to poop, but in other bodies, soy can turn into estrogen. My body took that little suggestion and ran with it while completely ignoring the other suggestions like the one about chocolate triggering an endorphin that makes eating it as good as sex (it’s not—unless your partner is covered in it—then maybe) and red wine having an anti-aging property (if that were true I’d be fucking Benjamin Button).

Nope. My body is a fucking mad scientist where estrogen is concerned. The Magic Merlin of this hormone laden secret sauce. A Jessica Rabbit look-alike alchemist gone awry. Estrogen makes you…womanly, whatever THAT means. My body heard ‘boobs!’ and interpreted that as something womanly women everywhere must want (they don’t) so the moment it heard that thing about soy it/she became overzealous and indiscriminating— turning EVERYTHING I ate into estrogen. 

Soup. 

Pringles.

Airport sushi.

green tea.

Churros.

Fucking EVERYTHING.

My doctor and I had a of decade of good laughs about this. 

“It can be a blessing,” she said one day after looking at my estrogen levels which could have given a thirty-year-old’s a run for her money. 

I was fifty-two at the time. 

“Your skin will stay moist… and you won’t dry up like an old lady,” she reassured me with a wink, wink at fifty-five.

Meanwhile I was growing a baseball team of fibroids who soaked happily in bubbling hot tubs of estrogen the mad scientist kept replenishing. 

All that to say, soy has never been my friend. I may have had skin supple enough to baffle the dermatologists, (or it could be my mother’s genes, the DNA test hints) and yet, I remained one edamame away from a hysterectomy which finally happened because someone couldn’t practice dietary self-restraint. 

I’m not sure I like these fancy tests that tell you all about yourself. I think I was better off not knowing what I know so I don’t have to feel bad about not listening to any of it. Besides, being afraid of inflammation is highly overrated, don’t you think?

I mean sometimes a stomach ache is just a bad burrito. Am I right? 

Carry on,
xox

I’ve spent a lot of time getting to know…me. 

Decades of self-exploration. Hundreds of hours of quiet introspection punctuated by an occasional primal scream.
Lab test out the hoo-ha. Some literally involving my hoo-ha. 
And don’t get me started on the thousands of dollars I’ve spent over the years getting in sync with my body—mind—and spirit.

Seeking, searching, asking, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

By this stage of the game I was confident in the fact that I knew myself quite well.
If asked on a game show, I could have easily identified my top three favorite foods:
Pasta.
Chocolate.
Truffles.
And for the bonus points in the lightning round—Truffle pasta with a hint of chocolate.

Ding,ding,ding!

“And what foods are you allergic to?” Bob might ask, in an attempt to stump me.

“None. Oh, wait, maybe strawberries. Sometimes they make my mouth itch. Ok, strawberries for the win!”

Ding, ding, ding!!

Confetti would fall, spokesmodels would weep, and I’d drive away in a BRAND. NEW. CAR!

“Thank you, Bob. And thank you, self, for being so figureoutable. 

But not anymore. All that has changed.

In the past month I’ve had a severe allergic reaction THREE TIMES to something unknown. Something I ingested. And it’s not like I’ve been eating street food in Vietnam, I’ve been at home all three times, eating lunch, which, if you must know, is boring as fuck.

Or is it? I suppose if it kills you, that makes it a bit more interesting…

Anyway, the reaction was the same. A fiery, red rash on my face, chest and arms, and the third time it happened I had trouble breathing. I ran for the Benadryl. That’s what the pharmacist had recommended when I’d called him breathlessly the first time this occurred.
“Take a Benadryl,” he said; his voice free of even the slightest hint of concern as I wheezed and sputtered on the other end of the phone.
I applaud his ability to remain detached. I really do. It has been my observation that is the case with most pharmacists. I’m sure it’s an act of self-preservation. God forbid his epinephrine spikes from identifying too closely with a panicky, hypersensitive, substance sufferer like me.

So I dd. I took the Benadryl.
And then I waited…and eventually…it helped.

My face went back to normal and my arms looked like arms again and not spotted, red clumps of itchy, hot meat.
But it had a side effect. It made me loopy. Loopier than normal. You all know I’m a high-functioning loop.
But apparently, if you add Benadryl into the mix, I bump into walls, drool, and can’t operate the blender. So, my day is over! Shot! And I pretty much end up asleep at my desk.

Which I’m told is a severe reaction. Groggy is normal. Unconsious—not so much.

So, what do you take if you’re allergic to Benadryl?

Thank you, Janet 2.0, for this ever evolving, surprisingly delicate, constitution you’ve saddled me with. And for developing a weird allergy to something random and boring that lurks in the pantry waiting to kill me/us. 

“Eat each thing separately and see which one triggers the reaction.” My pharmacist suggested, like it was a parlor game.  “But have a Benadryl in your hand when you do—you don’t want to stop breathing, and if you do—don’t call here—call 911.”

“Yeah—good advice, you heartless sadist. That’s not gonna happen.”

I’m thinking of switching to food trucks for lunch because if food’s gonna kill me—I’m going with Sriracha sauce all down my shirt and a smile on my face!

Carry on,
xox

I sat in traffic on a crowded tree-lined boulevard today trying to figure out how I could get to the Starbucks drive-thru on the other side of the street without going to jail.

I don’t mean to sound mellow dramatic, but the city planners had placed this caffeine savior on a corner that is almost impossible to get to without repelling from an aircraft. Seeing that I was not in my helicopter, or driving Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang today (if you have no idea what that is–shame on you—and look it up), I had the bright idea to go down a block, get in the left-hand turn lane and swing an illegal u-turn.

Great minds think alike.
The left turn lane had sixteen cars in it blocking the flow of traffic. There, clearly posted, was a black arrow swinging back at itself inside of a bright red circle with a slash through the middle. In other words, the universal sign for no u-turn. Unfortunately, caffeine deprived human beings don’t give a shit about signs. Signs are just suggestions. We want our lattes and we want them NOW!

Besides, there’s safety in numbers, right? 

As I waited for my turn to break the law, out of the corner of my eye my attention was drawn to the bus stop at the corner. There stood a young woman dressed like she was catching the shuttle to Coachella. Let me explain why that matters. We had London weather today. Cool, gray and drizzly. I wore a sweater although most people in LA who are under thirty dress like it’s one-hundred degrees all year ‘round.

In her daisy dukes, crop top, muffin top, and flip-flops, she was flailing around like my aunt doing the chicken dance at a family wedding. At first, I thought she might be having a seizure, but I quickly realized she was being chased by a bee.

I recognized that level of apiphobia.
Once, at a bar-b-que, the cousin of a friend ran straight through a sliding glass door trying to escape a bee. We all assumed she was allergic, fleeing for her life. She was not. She did, however, knock herself unconscious, require seventeen stitches and a splint for a severely broken nose.

Everyone uses anaphylactic shock as an excuse to act like a headless chicken but it’s actually pretty rare to die from a bee sting. Trust me, I looked it up. 

I’ve been stung by a bee half a dozen times in my life and while it hurts like a MoFo, in my opinion what she suffered was way worse than a bee sting. I never saw her again but I always wondered if her overreaction that day cured her of her bee phobia.

Back at the bus stop, I could understand this girls panic given all the prime real estate she displayed.
The amount of skin to clothing ratio must have summoned the bee to come and check her out. Don’t they always show up when you’re in a bikini drinking an orange soda? I suppose it could be the soda that attracts the bees, but they never sting the soda can, aiming their sites strictly on a bikini exposed stomach or the back of a lily-white thigh.

Think about that.

Speaking of soda, my little brother was drinking a soda once when a bee landed on his mouth, deftly placing its front legs on his upper lip and its back legs on his lower lip. Of course, he froze. I think he mumbled “help me” but being the highly dysfunctional family we were, we showed little concern for his well-being. This was funny and we love funny, so instead, we laughed our asses off, my mom took a Polaroid, and someone eventually snicked it off his lips with their thumb and forefinger leaving him shaken, but un-stung.

 Bus stop bee hysteria prevailed. The girl was spinning around frantically, arms in the air, wildly shooing the invisible bee from her hair and swatting at her face. It was the best free street theatre no money could buy. I’m ashamed to say I was riveted. I couldn’t look away. When she narrowly missed running into one of the bus stop poles, I nearly lost it. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe. Tears were streaming down my face. I think I peed a little.

I felt like such an ass (for a minute) laughing at her that way until I saw her laughing too. Oh, thank god she could see the humor! I guarantee you couldn’t have kept a straight face. The whole thing was hilarious!

Finally, the not so friendly, aggresive, honking from the long line of cars behind shook me from my trance. It was my turn to break the law and I was holding things up. In case you were wondering, when I left the Starbucks, I checked to see how our bee slayer had fared but she was gone. I can only assume she made it safely onto the bus or knocked herself unconscious with her shoulder bag and was in an abulance headed to the hospital.

So, thank you, girl at the bus stop being chased by a bee. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.

Carry on,
xox