I went to the allergist today. They made me put on a lovely little paper shirt that opened in the back. It was at the height of fashion. Then I had to lay flat on my stomach while they poked and pricked me with little needles that had various substances on them. After that, they left me alone, and I had to lay there on the table for 15 minutes to wait and see if I had a reaction. It was the most glorious 15 minutes of my life. No one talked to me. No one asked me any questions. It was quiet and peaceful and quiet. I enjoyed every minute. . . . well except for the fact that I was lying flat on my stomach with a paper shirt on . . . if not for the paper shirt it would've been perfect.
I think the pricking device looks something like this. See the little needles poking out the end? I never actually saw what the nurse used on my back, and it's next to impossible to find a photo of anything on the internet. Maybe the government uses them as torture devices . . . I'm not entirely sure.
The whole pricking wasn't too bad. I don't feel like it was all that painful. But I tend to have a high pain tolerance, so I'm not a good judge of what is and isn't painful. I've worked with a blinding migraine more than once, and I was up and walking less than 12 hours after my c-section. I'm not bragging. It's more like I'm pointing out that I'm weird, and apparently don't react to pain like a normal person. So if you don't have to have one done . . .
When it was all said and done, I had a mild reaction to sesame seeds. I didn't have any reaction to shellfish . . . thank the Good Lord . . . but we won't have a definitive answer until I do bloodwork in four weeks. Apparently, when you've had a food reaction you have to wait four weeks to do the blood test. So for the next four weeks, I'm not allowed to have any sesame seeds or seafood. The sesame seeds I'm okay with, but four weeks is a long time to go without seafood.
The doctor prescribed an EpiPen for me because she feels like I definitely had some sort of food reaction, but at this point we're just not sure what to. Since the chef used a massive amount of sesame seeds in our food on Saturday, she thinks that the amount may have triggered the reaction. She did say, however, that food reactions tend to worsen so now I get to carry around this handy-dandy little guy.
I'm seriously going to have to be dying to jam that thing into my leg (the needle pops out the end for those of you lucky enough not to know). I may have a high pain tolerance, but I'm not really into self inflicted pain . . . not in the least bit. Thankfully, the doctor said that Benadryl usually does the trick if the reaction is caught early enough. Hopefully, I won't ever have to find out.
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