My allergies are of the itchy, watery eyes and runny nose variety. Nothing life-threatening, but certainly a horrible inconvenience when I am trying to, you know, LIVE MY LIFE as best I can while doped up on Benadryl all the time.

Where I do have a life-threatening condition is when my idiopathic angioedema gets triggered and my mouth, tongue, or throat swells up so badly that I can't breathe. Usually, if I am awake, I can feel a tingling before the swelling happens so I know to take my massive pills filled with antihistamines to reduce the severity of the swelling before it happens. But if I am asleep? I wake up in a world of panic in the middle of the night... then have to dig out my epi-pen from my bag in case the swelling endangers my life.

I've actually only had to use the epi-pen once. It was not a fun experience. I felt like I had been hit by a truck, then passed out. When I woke up the swelling had subsided enough that my breathing was okay enough to not worry.

As the swelling is ideopathic, there's no known cause and it can happen at random.

But there is one thing which can trigger a reaction more reliably than others... mushrooms. No idea why. It took me a while to figure out that fungi can cause trouble for me. And it's odd, because I never ate mushrooms as a kid... I only discovered I liked them when I was an adult.

But anyway... I used to carry epi-pens with me everywhere just incase I (or somebody else) needed to use one.

But then the cost of epi-pens became so outrageously expensive that I stopped carrying them after they expired. I decided that I would just be more careful about not eating mushrooms and stop eating well before bedtime so I can be sure there wasn't a food I ate going to trigger any swelling.

As I understand it, you can buy generic epi-pens for a reasonable cost... or maybe it's to order them from Canada or something. I never thought to do it because I've been doing just fine. But recently I saw a video which makes me think that I need to seriously look into it.

This is kinda a crazy story. And a happy coincidence that Dr. Mike was on a flight when a guy had a serious problem...

If I were on that flight and had an epi-pen, it would have been really handy.

In other news... a tick bite can cause a meat allergy? I had heard of this, but never knew it could have deadly consequences like this.

One more reason I'm happy to be vegetarian, I guess.