The greatest types of food, most people would agree, are; rich chocolate, ice cream, smooth peanut butter, candy bars with an inside made of caramel, delicious peanuts and soft chewy nougat covered in lovely chocolate, and mostly anything else that contains chocolate and peanut butter. Now that your mouth is watering, imagine not being physically able to eat any of that, not even a morsel of that wonderful candy bar! Even better imagine being perfectly capable of filling your gut with all that food, but then a few nights later you wake up in a panic gasping for your next breathe, wondering if this next one will be more than the last or the last breath you take. I hope you can’t imagine that, but if you can that was my childhood.

    When I was a mere child I was a normal acting kid, to say the least, I ran about on the playground playing tag and swinging with the other kids, but when the birthday cake came out a friend’s party I turned into a social outcast. A child who adults looked at in a peculiar way and asked foolish questions to attempt to make them feel better. I remember one time specifically, though this kind of stuff would happen basically every birthday party.

“Would you like some cake Kenny?” Andrew’s mom, Mrs. Brogli asked first.

    “No thanks, I’m allergic.” I replied in a soft embarrassed voice. This was just so embarrassing for me I just wanted to be like everyone else, it didn’t help either that the things I was left out on were so great. If this wasn’t enough already next on the birthday party menu was ice cream; Yayyy! The kids would scream as they ran up to get a bowl of this delicious treat that followed the cake down so well.

“I know you would like some ice cream then Kenny?” The Mrs. Brogli asked.

“No ma’am actually I’m allergic to that too.” I replied in an almost depressed voice. I mean for a kid of my age this was a highly sensitive subject especially when you grow up in southeast America where the past time is eating.

    She had a look in her eye like she thought I was lying to her, “Really? Are you seriously allergic to chocolate and ice cream?”

    I replied in a smart alike tone “Yes, I am. “ Just to get her to be quiet about it, but there was always the ones that kept this annoying and embarrassing conversation going.

    “Wow! I don’t know how I could live if I couldn’t eat chocolate!” She said laughing with the other moms at the party. Of course at that time I didn’t really know that most women love chocolate and crave it at certain times. So I was mistaken in thinking that they were in a way poking fun at my dilemma. So I would just go away from the food with an empty stomach and a bitter taste in my mouth.

    This wasn’t always the case though sometimes when my mother wasn’t around I would get that piece of cake and enjoy to its best potential, then I would go in for the ice cream without any regretful or doubtful thought crossing my mind. My mom would pick me a little later after all the presents were opened and the thanks were given, she would always ask me the same question, “What kind of cake did they have?”

    “Ummm…. Chocolate….. with white icing.” I thought I was pretty smart.

    “Oh yea, did you eat any of it?” she interrogated

    “Yea just a little bit because I thought it was white cake at first, then once I bit into it I found out it was chocolate, but I couldn’t just waste it.” I would always smile at myself for thinking of a good excuse.

    “Well son, you know you’re going to get sick and when you do you’ll regret doing that.” She wasn’t always this nice either; when I was a little bit older she would tell me that when I got sick she wouldn’t take care of me. She was bluffing completely I knew, but she just did it to try to get me to stop eating stuff I was allergic to.

    What I had was asthma, which occurs when a trigger of some sort swells the tissues in the air passages of the lungs; making it difficult to take in a breath. Symptoms of asthma include shortness of breath, coughing, and wheezing. Of the ten million Americans with asthma only six to eight percent of kids have food triggered asthma and less than two percent adults have it. (IFIC Foundation) I was in a minority of unfortunate people who couldn’t eat certain things or else they would have complications later on. My triggers were; chocolate, ice cream, cheese, milk, any milk products, peanut products , any kind of nut products, corn, beans, bananas, pickles, and carrots. There’s actually a lot more, but they just weren’t very severe. The funny thing is the ones that I could actually eat most of the time, the carrots, bananas, pickles, corn, and beans; these were the ones I would rather be allergic to. The other allergies were pretty severe, one piece of cake and ice cream cone and the next night it would start. The wheezing and coughing and my mom would know what was up, so I don’t know why I lied to her in the first place about eating the cake and ice cream at the birthday parties.  

    This was a very scary disease to have, you lay your head down to sleep after eating some birthday cake and enjoying yourself greatly, with in minutes, before you know it, you can’t breathe or speak. A time that was especially bad was Halloween. Every Halloween you could pretty much bet I was going to have an asthmatic attack. All the delicious chocolate candy that was placed in that bag went straight to work in my body like a poison setting off the anti bodies and making a mess in my system. It didn’t help that it was a season for people with allergies to suffer. There are two strikes against me and now a third I always tried to eat all the candy I was allergic to in the car before my mom got a chance to check my stuff. I know you probably saying to yourself that I was just stupid for eating that stuff because it made me sick and I know I was stupid, but I was also a kid I never knew I could die from eating scrumptious chocolate and overwhelming peanut butter, that’s just not something that enters a seven year old kid’s mind.

One Halloween night I was pigging out on all the chocolate and peanut butter that I could, for some reason it seemed like every house this year had that kind of stuff, I was so happy! I don’t think I was ever able to get away with eating this much chocolate and peanut butter in my life! I just ate and I ate and I ate some more, it was lovely. The complete satisfaction that I felt when I got home was completed and total euphoria, I was so ecstatic! I thought I had it all and none of the consequences would come. I laid my head down for a healthy restful sleep; which I got for a few hours and then it started with a cough. A few hours later a wheeze, then a desperate breath and I woke up in a sweat. I didn’t know what to do I was in a panic trying to yell for my mom or dad, but I couldn’t speak because I had no breathe to create words and push them out of my mouth. The nonexistent snake tightened its grip around my fragile throat and I prayed for every second of life. Now I take a look back in my life and think about why this happened. Let’s see here I was very stupid and childish and ate all that candy and it felt so good, but now it defiantly didn’t feel right at all.

Right as my life started passing by my very eyes and the darkness started to take over my vision and every breath was less and less and my thought process and my blood and my heart started stopping. I saw the light, but this wasn’t the light at the end of the tunnel thing, this was my savior it was my father and he had my medication and knew exactly what to do. He ran in and told me to breathe in as much as I could as he held something to my mouth that felt like my medication, I couldn’t see still though my eyes were so blurry from the shock of the light. He picked me up and carried me out to the car telling me the whole time to just keep breathing. I remember being outside for that short time and feeling the cold November air pass by my face in such a way telling me that I was still alive.  It tingled every sense in my frail body, the frigid air chill my lungs once it finally hit them, one deep breath after another I felt life return to me. Once in the car my dad tried to ask me a few questions to keep me awake and I think also to calm himself down, I think he was more upset than I was. I could see the fear in his eyes and this didn’t make me feel real good, but I knew with him there it would be okay. We pulled into the old town doctor’s office and he was waiting on us when we arrived. He swung open the door and I crept in with my father holding my hand, I sat in this huge armchair and breathed for hours on this crazy machine that helped me breathe. I remember sitting there watching my dad and the doctor talking over on the other side of the room, I wondered what they were talking about cause I couldn’t hear anything they were saying over the loud machine sitting in front of me pumping me full of something.

    You would think that after that kind of experience that I would stop eating things that I was allergic to, but I didn’t I just kept on. I luckily never had a reaction like that again, but I did have some small attacks later on down the road. I’m glad though that I was stupid and kept eating things that I shouldn’t have because as I ate more and grew up, I became immune to a lot of the allergies. Now that I’m eighteen years old I am glad and proud to say that I was an idiot and that now I’m not allergic to any of those foods now and have finally got out of that small minority of people.

Bibliography
IFIC Foundation. “Asthma and Food.” Brochure. 2008.