On allergies

Hello everyone, and welcome back to my blog. It has certainly been awhile since I've updated! I hope you have all had lovely New Year celebrations and are looking forward to 2011 as much as I am!

I have not been blogging for awhile, having mistakenly believed that my Blogger account had been inactivated because I signed up for it using my old work email address. However, something-or-other happened and it turns out that I can still use my blog! Perhaps my old self foresaw that one day I would leave my place of work and therefore not be able to use that email address anymore, and cleverly linked this blog to my personal address. Or perhaps the whole signing-up-for-this-blog-with-my-work-address memory was a false one and I'd used my personal email address all along. But I digress. Sorry to bore you with my computer-ineptitude!

The topic ripe for discussion today is allergies. Do you have any allergies? For the past 20 years of my life I had believed I was some kind of supergirl who had absolutely no allergies except for a slight intolerance to lactose (being Azn, yo). Allergies were just another thing I thought could happen to other people, but never to me, no! I am very thankful that I can eat peanuts and gluten and other things that I often take for granted but could make other people incredibly ill. (I do love cheese, but cheese, being a dairy food, does not love me back, stupid cheese, I hate you! No just kidding, srsly, I love cheese).

I think that if you are allergic or intolerant to something your body should automatically develop an aversion to it, but alas, that doesn't often seem to be the case. Life would be a tiny bit easier if I didn't love cheese so much. My partner's dog is allergic to chicken but loves to sneak a small piece. My father used to break out in hives every time he ate seafood but loved it anyway and kept eating it until the allergic reaction surfaced no more. But there are other allergies which actually worsen after repeated exposures; I've heard that allergies to bee stings get worse with each progressive one (and I am also very thankful that so far no bee has ever stung me).

Anyway in the short space of about a week I discovered that perhaps I have two allergies. Neither allergy has to do with foodstuffs, so that's good at least (I would hate to be allergic to blueberries, or tea!). I had always considered it normal for mosquito bites to flare up into huge blisters since that has always been my experience, but apparently that's not the case... Apparently mosquito bites are only supposed to be small lumps. Well, how about that. After having a lovely night in Leura last weekend, watching a professional production of Romeo and Juliet in the park at night, I emerged covered with mosquito bites which I suppose I deserved, having worn a dress and not bothered with mosquito repellent and all. And then it was suggested to me that perhaps I had an allergy. The things you learn.

On the same weekend as this mosquito attack, I somehow developed an inability to wear my earrings because my earlobe piercings were a bit painful and perhaps bleeding a little, despite the fact that I've had my ears pierced for about ten years now. They are in the habit of bleeding every now and again which I just considered normal, perhaps I wasn't disinfecting my earrings as carefully as I should be. But then my partner suggested to me that this was not normal and perhaps I was allergic to a certain metal in earrings? I recalled an incident from my childhood which involved my drinking from a can of Coke (I'm no longer in the habit of drinking soft drinks), and getting a rash all over my hand from where I was holding the Coke can. I recall that my father may have said something about having an allergy to aluminium.

But sometimes it's just easier to live in denial. Even though my ears are still painful and my mosquito bites still blistery, I'd still like to think of myself as allergy-free, at least until it's confirmed in a medical setting or something. And while there isn't much I can do about my love for cheese, perhaps I can express said love in a different way, for example, by participating in those races where you roll a wheel of cheese down a hill? That would probably cause fewer problems for me than if I actually ingested the cheese.

Anyway I will leave you all for today, with that final thought of cheese-wheel races.