Allergies

I wish I knew what I am actually allergic to. Most people I know that have weird food allergies know what they can't have. Take my brother. He knows that if he drinks milk or has any sort of milk product, he'll have a nasty case of projectile vomiting. Though we thought it was funny when we were growing up, I don't think it's as funny seeing a 16-year-old vomit all over. It's a lot more nast to clean up. Then there are the people who can't have peanuts because it makes their throat close up. And the people who can't have gluten because it does something bad. But me...we don't know what I'm allergic to. But whatever it is, man does my face get swollen when I eat it. I've had this "problem" since I was a teenager, but we have never been able to figure out what causes it. Granted I've never had formal tests done, largely because the swelling happens so infrequently, but lately it seems to be happening a lot more often. On Thanksgiving of all days my mouth got HUGE.




I wish I had the picture Dan took....he's holding the camera I'm looking at in this picture. I'm sure you can see the grotesque-ness of it better from his angle. But, if you look at the left side of my mouth, it's noticeably larger than the right side. It doesn't hurt, but it's really annoying and it makes it difficult to drink. They took a picture of me drinking because I had to drink out of the right side of my mouth because my lip on the left side wouldn't go around the cup. Then we thought that maybe it would be a good idea to ice it. I mean, when you hurt your ankle and it gets all swollen, you ice it. Naturally, it would make sense to add ice to the swollen lip as well. That's the reason behind the other picture. It kind of looks like I got into a fight or something. Or maybe I lost a tooth in the food. Or the cat bit me. Or something. SO, we have decided to come up with a story as to why my lip was swollen on Thanksgiving and necessitated a large pack of ice being placed on my face at dinner. The story is we got a little carried away when we were passing the food around the table. I was the "end" of the table and got the job of putting the excess food on the secondary table (that part is actually true). Apparently I was going to slow and Tiffany actually tossed the casserole dish of yams at me. I turned around from nicely placing the mashed potatoes on the secondary table to see a big dish of orange flying at my face. I got my hands up in time to catch it and prevent any mess from occurring, but not in time to prevent a generous blow to the face. Lucky for me, the teeth that the dish hit are fake and so no dental damage was done, only extreme swelling in the maxilofacial region. That's my story. So much better than allergies.



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