A Nog in the Egg (or, The Yolk's On You)

So, now that the saga is at last drawing to a close, I think that I have had sufficient time and retrospect to be able to fill you in on this latest epic in the life of me. It began innocently enough, on December the 22nd. Alicia had just gone to stay w/ her parents after her stay w/ us, my mom had just taken her to the airport that afternoon. That night, it started w/ an itch. The next day when I woke up, I had broken out in hives all over the place, my neck, my arms, my back. I took some Benedryl and managed to ignore it most of the day. But that evening, it just got worse and worse until suddenly I found myself in the glorious emergency room with an allergic reaction, getting fine shots and many fine pills. The reaction cleared up a few days later, but it's occurance was a source of endless amusement to my dear mother as she tried to figure out what had caused the reaction. The funny thing was, really, that there was nothing out of the ordinary with my routine on that particular day. Hadn't started using any new kinds of soap or detergent, no new medications, no strange or exotic foods. But for some reason it was the foods she fixed on as the primary potential culprit. She narrowed down the possibilities until she decided that it had to be either ginger cookies or egg nog. How she decided on these particular foods remains a mystery to me, especially since I have eaten these foods all my life with immunity. She said that was because of the accumulation of toxins in my system that apparently reached some level at which I could no longer tolerate them.

Well, by the time the reaction cleared, I was already in Omaha, where I sampled some delicious egg nog ice cream. I mentioned this to my sweet mother on the phone and she responded, "What?!?! Why would you do that, you know you're allergic to egg nog!!! Squeak, squwak, squeaking, squwaking!" Yep, yep, that's clearly the case.

So, the saga ended today with a fine trip to the allergist. The first thing she told was that, based on my symptoms, it could not possibly be a food allergy. The diagnosis that she was able to give was that some people have bodies that randomly reject their own cells as allergens. I find this to be strangely ironic, that in addition to being rather on the crazy side myself, that my body would follow suit by randomly attacking itself every now and again. Well, there might be some other insights following the bloodwork, but there's no way to tell. For now, there's nothing to do except wait for the test results...and laugh and laugh and laugh.