Growing up I had obvious food allergies. Milk and corn were the first two my parents figured out - if I had either I was the most hyper-active, angry, sensitive toddler in the world. Those were the first to go.
In eighth grade I figured out chocolate after having some stomach problems from chocolate soy milk. At this time, I wasn't super good about avoiding the things I was allergic to, and I cheated my diet all the time. This resulted in various skin reactions, the most common being eczema, flakey-skin, and the area around my eyes becoming red, baggy, wrinkly. Sometimes my left eye would swell up. I would call it my "devil eye" or pretend I was Quasi-Moto. Ahh, those were the days.
In my senior year of high school, after a boy I liked scorned me for the last time, I went on a Halloween binge and devoured any and all Skittles, Dots, and candy bars for about a week. This set my body into a perpetual state of crisis, and after it was over, I never ate chocolate again.
During my gap year and my first two years of college I picked up a few more allergies. This is when my parents and I started to realize I had environmental allergies - allergies to things that I didn't ingest. Dust, latex, chlorine. Almonds became a thing during this time too. I also had a lovely case of boils, a staph infection that got in through a patch of eczema. Thanks eczema <3
My junior of college, Fall 2011, I transferred and moved out for the first time. This is when my health began its slow descent into the Pit of Despair, which I am currently climbing out of. Despite being assured that the dining hall could accommodate my allergies, and making sure I wrote down my dust allergy on my Res Life form, I quickly realized my college was not equipped to deal with me. I got placed in a dorm with old, dusty, moldy carpeting. The dining hall cooked everything in corn oil. I lost ten pounds in about two weeks, and I had a dust allergic reaction nearly every day. I lived on Benadryl which made me so tired I had a hard time keeping up with my demanding coursework. I somehow finished out the semester in good academic standing, and fought my way to getting medical exemption from having the required meal plan. My college still currently owes me over $1000 from meals I couldn't/didn't use. But I digress.
I got moved to another, more sterile dorm my second semester, got an air purifier, and committed to life cooking my own food. That was better, but somewhere in there I got mono. Mono that didn't get diagnosed for four months (it took me an additional 3 months to begin to get better after that). My body reacted to this mono by deciding it was HIGHLY allergic to EVERYTHING. I could no longer tolerate citric acid of any kind, and I had mysterious reactions all over the place. My immune system was shot. I finished spring semester on medical extension, with the help of some truly wonderful professors. Onto summer, where I hoped I would begin to heal. Had a horrible reaction to Salmon in May that was anaphylaxis-like. Got an epipen, and a medical bag to carry around emergency drugs. Put Salmon on my list of nos.
Here's where it gets worse.
In June 2012 I finally started to recover from mono, but simultaneously got a yeast infection (sorry if this is TMI, believe me, this will be useful for some people). I tried the usual over-the-counter stuff but nothing would get rid of it, and it was driving me absolutely crazy. I saw my regular doctor, who prescribes me a a yeast pill and prednisone. My symptoms went away briefly, and came back all over again. I did some reading online and found out about "Candida Overgrowth" for the first time. I put myself on a candida diet in September, and my symptoms got a little better. Saw my local Planned Parenthood around the same time, and was prescribed Terazole, which seemed to do nothing. Went to another gynocologist who diagnosed me with an inflammatory problem and gave me steroids, and told me to go off my candida diet. Went off the diet, used the steroid cream, horrible results. Went back on the diet.
Around October is when I made an appointment at Northampton Wellness, a practice specalizing in allergies and complicated problems like mine. My first appointment went OK, I got RAST testing for the first time and was prescribed Nystatin, a candida-killing powder. My IgG results showed I was reacting to more things than I thought: wheat, eggs, soy, bananas, pineapples, white beans, and garlic all got added to my list of nos. Many of these I wasn't eating anyway because of candida, but losing garlic and eggs was a big deal.
Started the Nystatin in November. Over the course of the month, I felt myself emotionally unraveling. I thought I was suffering from depression because of my health. I went to a therapist at school, and tried meditating, but I kept suffering from 3 hour crying jags that I couldn't control. I felt like I was never going to get better. Did a round of Diflucan that gave me die-off symptoms, but no relief.
Finished the semester with straights As. Still unsure of how that happened.
Went home. My Mom freaked out about how bad I was emotionally and mentally (this was warranted, I was a bitchy mess). She looked up Nystatin powder on the internet, made a few demanding calls and...you guessed it. I had called the pharmacy and Northampton Wellness asking if there was any corn in Nystatin powder, and both had assured me it was corn-free. What they neglected to mention was that Nystatin is grown in corn protein. Stopped taking Nystatin and felt better the next day. Stopped taking all other supplements Northampton prescribed me, because those were all full of corn too. Canceled my next appointment there, and found another allergy/wellness practice: Vision Medical Center. Got an appointment there for January.
Went to a new gynecologist in December, who informed me I did not have a yeast infection or infection of any kind anymore. Just irritation, probably due to candida. He prescribed me a suppository with lactobacillus, estrogen, and acidophillus, along with estrogen cream. That helped a lot, and soon my symptoms lessened even more, although were still persistent.
Now were almost current!
It took about a month for me to really get all of the corn out of my system. Since the Nystatin incident, I have been weaning corn products out of my life completely. New soap, new shampoo, new (homemade) detergent, custom pain relievers and Benadryl. I had to stop taking my every day antihistamine Claritin, because it turns out there is corn in the liquid gels.
As I write this, it's February 2013 and I just had my first appointment at Visions Medical Center in Wellesley, MA. I have a lot of faith in her, and it looks like we're getting on the right track. My candida symptoms have lessened, but I'm still on a very strict diet, candida issues are still very much a part of my daily life. My allergies are getting better and worse at the same time, but I feel hopeful now that I had a competent doctor who can help me manage them. I just went through another round of blood tests, we'll see the results in March at my follow-up. My overall energy and mood have improved greatly since getting corn out of my system, and my poor, irritated skin has improved as well.
I've realized getting healthy is going to be a slow, slow process. Maybe years. I want to share my knowledge and process with other people, because I have so appreciated the positive, knowledgeable people I have found online. Without certain blogs, I would be most certainly in a worse place than I am.
So here we go!
In eighth grade I figured out chocolate after having some stomach problems from chocolate soy milk. At this time, I wasn't super good about avoiding the things I was allergic to, and I cheated my diet all the time. This resulted in various skin reactions, the most common being eczema, flakey-skin, and the area around my eyes becoming red, baggy, wrinkly. Sometimes my left eye would swell up. I would call it my "devil eye" or pretend I was Quasi-Moto. Ahh, those were the days.
In my senior year of high school, after a boy I liked scorned me for the last time, I went on a Halloween binge and devoured any and all Skittles, Dots, and candy bars for about a week. This set my body into a perpetual state of crisis, and after it was over, I never ate chocolate again.
During my gap year and my first two years of college I picked up a few more allergies. This is when my parents and I started to realize I had environmental allergies - allergies to things that I didn't ingest. Dust, latex, chlorine. Almonds became a thing during this time too. I also had a lovely case of boils, a staph infection that got in through a patch of eczema. Thanks eczema <3
My junior of college, Fall 2011, I transferred and moved out for the first time. This is when my health began its slow descent into the Pit of Despair, which I am currently climbing out of. Despite being assured that the dining hall could accommodate my allergies, and making sure I wrote down my dust allergy on my Res Life form, I quickly realized my college was not equipped to deal with me. I got placed in a dorm with old, dusty, moldy carpeting. The dining hall cooked everything in corn oil. I lost ten pounds in about two weeks, and I had a dust allergic reaction nearly every day. I lived on Benadryl which made me so tired I had a hard time keeping up with my demanding coursework. I somehow finished out the semester in good academic standing, and fought my way to getting medical exemption from having the required meal plan. My college still currently owes me over $1000 from meals I couldn't/didn't use. But I digress.
I got moved to another, more sterile dorm my second semester, got an air purifier, and committed to life cooking my own food. That was better, but somewhere in there I got mono. Mono that didn't get diagnosed for four months (it took me an additional 3 months to begin to get better after that). My body reacted to this mono by deciding it was HIGHLY allergic to EVERYTHING. I could no longer tolerate citric acid of any kind, and I had mysterious reactions all over the place. My immune system was shot. I finished spring semester on medical extension, with the help of some truly wonderful professors. Onto summer, where I hoped I would begin to heal. Had a horrible reaction to Salmon in May that was anaphylaxis-like. Got an epipen, and a medical bag to carry around emergency drugs. Put Salmon on my list of nos.
Here's where it gets worse.
In June 2012 I finally started to recover from mono, but simultaneously got a yeast infection (sorry if this is TMI, believe me, this will be useful for some people). I tried the usual over-the-counter stuff but nothing would get rid of it, and it was driving me absolutely crazy. I saw my regular doctor, who prescribes me a a yeast pill and prednisone. My symptoms went away briefly, and came back all over again. I did some reading online and found out about "Candida Overgrowth" for the first time. I put myself on a candida diet in September, and my symptoms got a little better. Saw my local Planned Parenthood around the same time, and was prescribed Terazole, which seemed to do nothing. Went to another gynocologist who diagnosed me with an inflammatory problem and gave me steroids, and told me to go off my candida diet. Went off the diet, used the steroid cream, horrible results. Went back on the diet.
Around October is when I made an appointment at Northampton Wellness, a practice specalizing in allergies and complicated problems like mine. My first appointment went OK, I got RAST testing for the first time and was prescribed Nystatin, a candida-killing powder. My IgG results showed I was reacting to more things than I thought: wheat, eggs, soy, bananas, pineapples, white beans, and garlic all got added to my list of nos. Many of these I wasn't eating anyway because of candida, but losing garlic and eggs was a big deal.
Started the Nystatin in November. Over the course of the month, I felt myself emotionally unraveling. I thought I was suffering from depression because of my health. I went to a therapist at school, and tried meditating, but I kept suffering from 3 hour crying jags that I couldn't control. I felt like I was never going to get better. Did a round of Diflucan that gave me die-off symptoms, but no relief.
Finished the semester with straights As. Still unsure of how that happened.
Went home. My Mom freaked out about how bad I was emotionally and mentally (this was warranted, I was a bitchy mess). She looked up Nystatin powder on the internet, made a few demanding calls and...you guessed it. I had called the pharmacy and Northampton Wellness asking if there was any corn in Nystatin powder, and both had assured me it was corn-free. What they neglected to mention was that Nystatin is grown in corn protein. Stopped taking Nystatin and felt better the next day. Stopped taking all other supplements Northampton prescribed me, because those were all full of corn too. Canceled my next appointment there, and found another allergy/wellness practice: Vision Medical Center. Got an appointment there for January.
Went to a new gynecologist in December, who informed me I did not have a yeast infection or infection of any kind anymore. Just irritation, probably due to candida. He prescribed me a suppository with lactobacillus, estrogen, and acidophillus, along with estrogen cream. That helped a lot, and soon my symptoms lessened even more, although were still persistent.
Now were almost current!
It took about a month for me to really get all of the corn out of my system. Since the Nystatin incident, I have been weaning corn products out of my life completely. New soap, new shampoo, new (homemade) detergent, custom pain relievers and Benadryl. I had to stop taking my every day antihistamine Claritin, because it turns out there is corn in the liquid gels.
As I write this, it's February 2013 and I just had my first appointment at Visions Medical Center in Wellesley, MA. I have a lot of faith in her, and it looks like we're getting on the right track. My candida symptoms have lessened, but I'm still on a very strict diet, candida issues are still very much a part of my daily life. My allergies are getting better and worse at the same time, but I feel hopeful now that I had a competent doctor who can help me manage them. I just went through another round of blood tests, we'll see the results in March at my follow-up. My overall energy and mood have improved greatly since getting corn out of my system, and my poor, irritated skin has improved as well.
I've realized getting healthy is going to be a slow, slow process. Maybe years. I want to share my knowledge and process with other people, because I have so appreciated the positive, knowledgeable people I have found online. Without certain blogs, I would be most certainly in a worse place than I am.
So here we go!
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