#when they dont and even if they had a mild allergy i would risk it in certain circumstances bc it is literally life or death

[bisexualspace]

something that bothers me every day at work are medication 'allergies' that just aren't true allergies

And i don't blame the patient's because its just poor education on our part on what classifies an allergy (probably should avoid the drug in future) vs a side effect/adverse reaction (we can use the drug in future unless theres an equally effective alternative with some supportive meds)

nausea/vomiting/diarrhea after taking a medication is almost certainly not an allergy, especially with antibiotics (antibiotics of all sorts are known to cause this as a side effect!)

the reason it bothers me is because so many people get slapped with 'penicillin allergy' which means you can have THE most effective antibiotics for several conditions (skin infections, chest infections, meningitis, gut infections are often in part treated with penicillins). Us using an alternative is possible but largely far less effective! And just because someone hasn't sat down and explained that its not an allergy!!

#this is actually a rant against health professionals for not explaining stuff aren't allergies but also #health professionals for recording these things as allergies bc they didnt take 2 seconds to explore the reaction #literally if a patient tells me 'i have a penicillin allergy!' #i just ask - what happens when you have it (which is important even if it is an allergy bc there are cross reactions in anaphylaxis) #and if its 'nausea/vomiting/diarrhea' i just politely say #that it isn't an allergy. its a side effect. and while we can try to avoid this medication it will mean you have worse treatment #or risk worse outcomes #and usually patients are very receptive #and i totally get you dont want to vomit! i can help with that #but also if you have a skin infection which is severe i need to give you penicillins first line!!! #so you dont die! #anyways this was a bad weekend of night shifts lol #trying to like. give antibiotics to dying patients when people are arguing they have an 'allergy' to it #when they dont and even if they had a mild allergy i would risk it in certain circumstances bc it is literally life or death

[beesmygod]

i had this typed up for my newsletter im working on lol. i solved one of my health mysteries. tl;dr: food allergy

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having a completely fucked up sleep schedule goes hand in hand with having a fucked up food schedule, which means my last meal is when the sun comes up and i dont get hungry until late in the day. any attempts to break this pattern risk waking up ravenously, eating-raw-meat-out-of-the-freezer hungry in the middle of what was supposed to be my sleep cycle. i do whatever the opposite of torpor is. i invented a worse way of mammalian living. do NOT steal.

so anyway, every night before i go to bed, i would fill my empty tummy with a delicious peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich. this is because strawberry is the tastiest, most accessible jelly. let me explain: when you go to a diner and search through the little jelly basket with all the jellies in it, you will see these flavors and these flavors ONLY!!! (ranked by deliciousness):

strawberry

orange marmalade

mixed berry

the putrid concord grape

orange marmalade is a distant second to the only good jelly on this list. i like strawberry jam.

in the mornings, i started eating special k cereal (red berries, again, the only good one) hoping the vitamin c would cure whatever was causing me to feel so fucking sick and miserable on a daily basis. every day i would wake up exhausted and every night i would go to bed in terrible pain from my entire chest down. it was hard to explain my symptoms outside of just feeling like total shit generally. to be honest, i thought it was just the result of bad living. my chest was often tight but i attributed this to how freakishly tense my body is from years of letting anxiety run ramshod over my brain and body. ive had this problem for over a decade.

recently, i went on vacation for a few days to d.c. with my boyfriend, adam. on the evening of the second day, as we shared a plate of fried chicken livers as romantically as possible, i told him, "i feel so good. this is the best i've felt in a long time!". and i really meant it. the rash on my face had cleared up significantly, my stabbing chest pain i had attributed to heartburn/dying was gone, and best of all, i felt like i could breathe. my chest no longer felt like it was being crushed and my lungs didnt feel like they were sticking together instead of inflating. my legs didnt even hurt as much when i walked, which seemed like a massive achievement to me.

i came home from d.c. late in the evening and returned to my nightly ritual sandwich. that's when i noticed, for the first time ever (now that i was unburdened with terrible pain elsewhere), that my mouth was burning and tingling in a way that might be textbook anaphylaxis.

i thought back to the time when my sister told me she liked the taste of bananas but they were too spicy for her. and how i laughed at her and said "what the hell are you talking about", which in turn lead to the discovery of her birch allergy. i also thought back to high school when i suddenly started feeling very ill, tired, and weak almost every single day. but i would still *~bravely~* find the strength to go into work nearly every day. i would be sooooo hungry by the time i got to my job immediately after getting out of school and wouldnt get to eat until i got home at 9pm. so i would commit a little corporate theft and eat some sample sized special k (red berries) intended for patrons. hmm. a pattern is emerging.

now i have an epipen and blood work being processed by a doctor who expressed mild horror at how frequently i was dosing myself with a little bit of near death experience just for delicious strawberries. as it turns out, you feel a lot better once you stop poisoning yourself on a daily basis. at no point did i ever think i was going to die from any of my various problems despite having every symptom that obviously points at a reaction. i dont know. i thought i just rolled some bad genetic dice and got stuck with the shitty body lol.

i did sort of eat the rest of the sandwich tho. it was good. no ragrets