Well, it seems that I’ve got another fairly severe food allergy, and I don’t yet know to what.

We went out to pizza Thursday night. I had a combo sort of thing, with nothing on it (that I knew of) that I’m allergic to. Fifteen minutes after I left, I started having trouble breathing, but wrote it off to a reaction to the overly-perfumed lady that invaded our space. When I got home, Benadryl took care of it in about half an hour.

So what did I do for breakfast the next morning? I ate the leftover pizza. And fifteen minutes later, bang. Trouble breathing, and worse than the night before. I told work I was going home, and when the Benadryl didn’t make a dent in it, bullied my way into the doctor’s office. I was very aware of where my Epi-pen was by now, and my inhaler. And I was worried because I was alone – Junior was in the mountains hunting.

After sitting in the waiting room for half an hour getting worse, I finally got in. There was only the NP there. She gave me a steroid shot, a steroid prescription, and instructions on over the counter antihistamines to support that stuff. Oh, and based on a friend’s recommendation, I asked for a referral to an allergist – can’t imagine why the doctor hadn’t suggested that to me before.

I dragged myself to the pharmacy. I called my in-laws because they were going up to the mountains later that day to see if they could send Junior home, but I also successfully got him on the radio. I’m glad we upgraded those! I was afraid to go to sleep alone, since last time this happened, I quit breathing an awful lot all night. He came home to take care of me.

I’ve never had a reaction linger this long. Once the initial breathing difficulties were dealt with, I still had a lot of inflammation in my lungs. It’s like they’ve been scarred, and I have no endurance at all. Walking through Target was a chore today. I’m trying to sit still and heal, because I have to work on Tuesday.

What a waste of a three-day weekend. Since the kids are minors, they couldn’t go hunting without us, and it’s Seamus’ first season. I hated to make him lose one of those weekends. And I had plans for myextra day off too. I was going to clean out the chicken coop, but getting all of that stuff in my lungs sounds like a spectacularly bad idea right now, not to mention that I doubt I could handle the exertion. I feel like an emphysemic 80-year-old.

I’m bored to death and I can’t even nap it off, as the Benadryl isn’t making me sleepy like it usually does, despite the unusually high doses. And now I’m sort of afraid to eat things, especially that I haven’t cooked myself. I have no idea what was on that pizza. I don’t usually react that badly to anything but walnuts and pecans – is it possible that some damn creative cook drizzled walnut oil on it? I’ll never know, but it makes eating out kind of a risky proposition. Which makes me sad; I’m an adventurous eater and don’t want to be bound to a life of boring predictability in the food department.

I don’t know what to expect from the allergist either. I assume there’ll be some sort of scratch test that might specify what things I really have to avoid. I’m a little afraid to have a reaction to whatever they use to test with. But mostly I’m afraid of not knowing. Since these reactions are getting worse each time, I may have to employ the Epi-pen next time, and that’s frightening. And recovering from it is scary too. This isn’t fun. I don’t want to live in fear, but I see that I’m going to have to amp that up a little. Pot lucks may be off-limits to me now too, come to think of it. It has me worried.