Pesticide Allergy

So we bought some wonderful fresh blueberries and blackberries from the farmer’s market on Thursday afternoon which I carefully washed and packed up for our lunches on Friday morning.  As I washed them I snacked on little handfuls, they were so cool and fresh and delicious – local juicy fruit, pulled from the fridge first thing in the morning to start the day. All the books and websites have told me that these are the superfood that will not only help my cholesterol but also reduce the inflammation that causes my arthritis.  So I feel no guilt as I steal even more berries when I am filling the little ziplocks that I will put into our lunch sacks. Yum!

Soon lunches are packed, coffee is poured. I have planned for us to buy breakfast at Einstein this Friday morning because I have a good coupon. Just a quick stop in the bathroom and we’ll be off to the train.  “My,” I think, “my eyes at sure itchy… Oh no… I could not possibly be allergic to those berries, could I?” I wondered as my breathing became labored. “Oh crap.”

I came out and took two Benadryl immediately then a couple of puffs from my inhaler. It was getting unimaginably painful to breathe so I took out my epipen and asked my husband to read the instructions. I’ve never used the damn thing before and it’s been a couple of years since I got it so I couldn’t remember and I couldn’t see anything because my eyes were getting puffy and teary.  He figured it out and I shot myself in the leg expecting something to happen but it didn’t do anything. Between breaths I told him that I thought we’d better go to the emergency room so off we went. 

Needless to say it was a pretty scary ride for me. I was trying to remain calm but it was so hard to breathe and so painful. And when we got to the hospital they didn’t exactly rush me into a room, we had to sit for a minute at the check in desk even though the policeman at the door seemed really concerned about my lack of breath and kept going in the back to get someone to take me. I guess if you don’t arrive in an ambulance they don’t take it as seriously.  Last time I was in the emergency room for this, I came by ambulance and was whisked right into a cubicle.  

Anyway the Benadryl may have been beginning to work a little bit because I wasn’t dead yet and hadn’t passed out, and blessedly hadn’t started itching, but I still couldn’t breathe right.  And actually, I guess the nurse did come out fairly quickly to take me in, leaving my husband to do the paperwork.

I got the IV, the heart monitor, blood pressure cuff, oxygen monitor, oxygen nose thing… The whole nine yards. A doctor came to see me and agreed that the epipen didn’t work and suggested that it might have expired ( we discoverd later that it had).  She said it didn’t appear that I had any of the physical symptoms of someone who had taken the epipen – high blood pressure, shakiness, etc.  Instead my blood pressure was 90/58, a little low even for me (I usually run low) and was not shaky, but struggling to breathe.

They gave me some meds in the IV, some steroids I guess and some oxygen and let the Benadryl continue to work. Then I had to wait for three hours as they ‘observed’ me.  By the end of the three hours I did feel much better and thought I’d go to work but then changed my mind on the way to the train station and had my husband drop me home instead much to his relief.

So much for super foods. I’ve eaten non-organic blueberries, raspberries and blackberries from Jewel and Costco but the Jewel tart cherry juice – just a few sips of it sent me into a terrible allergy attack and the Costco sliced mangos did too.  The mango I ate in Haiti was fine, but that was from my sister-in-law’s backyard, unsprayed, all natural apparently.  It must be some specific pesticide. I just don’t know which one. It’s on some fruits, some vegetables and many nuts, particularly almonds and pistachios but apparently not peanuts. Ugh I just don’t get it. Whatever.