allergies – Sheryl Kirby

Patio, No

I have a question for restaurant owners everywhere.

If your restaurant has a patio (or even if it doesn’t), why is it necessary to have your front windows and doors open on a hot day? Is it because you assume that everyone loves sitting on the patio, and by opening doors or installing big garage-style windows that open to the street that customers seated indoors will feel like they’re on that patio? Or is it just a way to get around running the air conditioning?

Because not everyone wants to sit outside.

Greg and I went out for lunch today. We arrived at our destination to find that the place had all the windows and doors open, and that it was actually hotter inside than outside on the patio, where there was at least a breeze.

I’m currently balancing on a very thin precipice with my allergies. Six weeks in and having tried three different medications, I’m finally at a point where I can actually go outside to get from point A to point B, but sitting for an hour or more in air full of astronomical amounts of mold spores is really not fun.

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(Per)Fuming

Articles in all the major papers today, telling the world what many of us already knew – perfumes are toxic.

The testing showed that each fragrance contains, on average, 14 chemicals that are not listed on the product label. In total, nearly 40 undisclosed chemicals were found in the 17 products tested. The products contained a total of 91 chemicals, some identified on labels and some not. Of those, only 19 have ever been reviewed by the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, a review body of the cosmetics industry.

The kicker, of course, for people with “sensitivity” to perfume is that we can’t even get a legal diagnosis of “allergic” because perfume companies are not required to list all of those ingredients. Without a list, doctors can’t isolate the individual ingredients, and to ascertain an allergic reaction, each ingredient would have to be tested. Even then, knowing you’re allergic to, say, lilial, doesn’t really help if it’s out there in the chemical soup that people shroud themselves in.

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When Your Food Makes You Swell Up and Fall Down

There’s nothing more delightful than an ice cream cone on a warm summer evening. Strolling along and licking at a scoop of chocolate gelato as the sun sets is one of the season’s great pleasures – a pleasure unknown to anyone with a life-threatening dairy allergy, where the joy of a cold treat can swiftly be cut short by having your throat swell up and your breathing cut off.

Anaphylaxis is the most severe reaction to a food allergy, and the most dangerous, but even milder reactions can cause discomfort and frustration. Allergy-sufferers who experience severe, life-threatening reactions from common food allergens such as peanuts, shellfish, eggs or dairy often carry a device called an Epi-pen which contains an antidote that can be used if they accidentally ingest a food they’re allergic to. But while the Epi-pen will save the life of a person suffering from anaphylactic shock, there is no ongoing treatments for food allergies as there are for other allergens such as mold or dust where weekly injections of the allergen can be administered to build up resistance. Avoidance is the only real option for people who find that certain foods make them sick.

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