Allergies SUCK!

Let me paint you a picture of how my life has been lately. I have to look at the label for everything because I don't know what is in everything. There's so many things that I've taken for granted for my whole life that now I can't. To cover that a little bit more, let me reverse back to September.

I came home after picking my daughter up from cheer practice and sat to eat dinner. A few bites in I got food stuck in my throat. Sounds bad, but it isn't abnormal for me. I've lived with swallowing issues my whole life. We have always figured I just had issues swallowing because I didn't chew well enough or I took too big of bites. This time was different. I couldn't get the food cleared (down or up) after a couple of minutes. Not even after 10 minutes; or an hour! So I called a nurse.  After speaking with them and going over a lot of questions they said that as long as I am not in any discomfort, not too worried, and if I can sleep elevated the food will likely clear overnight. Then I should follow up with my doctor in the morning. Not being one to worry too much about it since I felt fine, I went to bed.

The next morning I tried to take a drink of water and the water came right back out. The food was still stuck. So, I got the kids off to school went to the emergency room.  They gave me less than an hour to find a ride because they were going to put me under so that they could do an endoscopy.  Luckily my buddy Pedro was able to come help me out. The problem is they said that they couldn't do the scope because my throat was so swollen.  They tried to balloon my throat and it was still to swollen. They did a biopsy from my esophagus, but couldn't do the one from just below my stomach like they were supposed to in order to check for Celiac Disease as well. Prior to the procedure they guessed that I have something called Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE). The test results confirmed their suspicions. As a result they sent me to an allergy specialist.  Come to find out that I am allergic to several things:

• Wheat
• Corn
• Egg
• Dairy
• Beef

Now I have to give a lot of credit to my wife because she tries so hard to make sure that every meal fits my newfound lifestyle. Even though I tell her all of the time not to, it still stresses her out. I love her so much for doing that for me. This has been a real adjustment for all of us; and it gives me a new way of thinking about things and eating. It makes it really hard to find food that I can eat at times, especially the convenience foods that we are all so used to eating. Throughout our searching we have found a few brands that are very safe because of how stringent they are to make sure that they cover as many allergens as possible. One of my favorite brands so far is Enjoy Life. It has really been helping me to enjoy the foods that I can't have like cookies. Yes, we all enjoy us some cookies from time to time.

For anyone that deals with any type of allergens, my hat is off to you. Especially if you've dealt with any kind of allergies for a long time, and if they are more severe/life threatening. Whereas I'm just finding out and having to adjust majorly. I'm also putting my family under the stress of having to worry about what I'm allergic to. It goes even so far that my seven-year-old daughter even looks at labels and tells me, "Daddy, you can eat this there's no allergies." My heart breaks that she is that smart, and also feels that she has to look out for me. She shouldn't have to look out for her dad.