Last Sunday morning started out "normal" enough. We decided on pancakes for breakfast, so I got out everything necessary. I made the gluten free one first to avoid any cross contamination. Then I started on the gluten filled mix. I made a few and J got the kids started eating. I grabbed a gluten one to munch on while flipping the ones cooking. A few minutes later I began to wonder when I had burned my tongue.
As we ate our pancakes, I began to wonder why I hadn't noticed that I had burned the roof of my mouth. I didn't think much of it, but mentioned it to J. A little while later I realized that my tongue was swollen. And this was about the time J was preparing to leave for the week.
I took some Benedryl, but didn't have much in the house - yeah, bad planning on my part. Later that evening I could barely talk, but didn't have any problems other than my mouth. So I took Benedry and just pushed through. Oh, it was rough.
A swollen tongue makes it hard to talk, and when you are home alone 24 hours a day with four kids ages six and under.....you have to talk. The sides of my tongue were extremely raw from my teeth and my speech was slow and methodical.
I called my allergy doc first thing Monday morning and luckily was able to get an appointment for that Thursday. And by Wednesday morning, my tongue was more or less back to normal.
My appointment went fairly well, with the exception that it was my second appointment of the day (the first was with a pulmonologist to try to extinguish this chronic cough) and it was naptime. The nurses tried to give my kids crackers....and had to decline those.
The nurse practitioner went over my files (as both docs were on vacation....) and she was confused. We went over the pancake mix ingredients and my allergy list. I believed my only allergy (from my testing last fall) was to wheat. However, that is not what my file said!! It said peanuts!!! And there was NO peanuts in the mix....
Wow!! That put me into a state of shock! I thought I had "outgrown" my peanut allergy, as I had with the corn, soy, and tomato allergies from my childhood. I thought I had a minor wheat allergy. (I went and checked my files at home, and peanut was correct!) The only thing the nurse could think of was that my allergies overloaded and I reacted. She said it wouldn't have mattered what I ate.
So now I have to keep a food diary to see if I react to anything again. I haven't started it yet, but have eaten both wheat and peanut butter this week, without reacting. I was prescribed an epi-pen, but have yet to pick it up, as my insurance has to "approve" it, and also Walgreens seems to have problems getting one! I will try again tomorrow...
This reminds me of the newest Star Trek movie - the one of James Kirk's beginning. In it, he gets a vaccine to make him ill, so he can get on board the ship when a crisis breaks out. He had been accused of cheating and was supposed to be left at the school. He reacts to the vaccine and starts to have problems talking. He says "numb tongue? I have numb tongue?" Yeah, numb tongue.
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