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Photoblogging Day #32: Potted Plants
Jul. 2nd, 2024 10:41 am
About to re-pot my money tree (Tony) and my umbrella tree (Alice)! :D
Jul. 2nd, 2024
About to re-pot my money tree (Tony) and my umbrella tree (Alice)! :D
Peanuts Are The Devil
Jul. 2nd, 2024 10:51 amMom apparently discovered I was allergic to peanuts when I was six months old. She gave me some peanut butter flavored pudding, and I LOVED it. Then I started projectile vomiting until I passed out. And I continued projectile vomiting WHILE I was passed out. She didn't take me to the hospital (WHY, I ask?) and I eventually came around, but she figured out pretty quickly that peanuts were a no-go for me.
After that first time, for my whole childhood and my teenage years, we were very careful to keep me away from peanuts, but when exposures DID happen the reaction was usually relatively mild. Some tingling in my mouth and throat and mild nausea. I would come into physical contact with peanuts and peanut products as long as they didn't actually go INSIDE ME, and that counted my eyes as we found out one day when I was around seven, when I handed some peanuts to Lee and then proceeded to rub my eyes. They swelled completely closed. I don't remember it, but I imagine it wasn't a fun time. Also people could cook/bake with peanuts/peanut butter with me around and I was fine.
But when I got into my twenties my allergy started getting worse. First it was headaches; I would still get the tingly mouth and throat and the nausea, but I would also get a WHOPPER of a migraine. About that time it also became impossible for people to cook/bake with peanuts with me around, because the aerosolized oils got into my lungs and caused me to have massive asthma attacks. Even someone just spreading peanut butter on warm toast bothers me, but not enough to tell them to stop. Sometimes when I go into stores that have their own bakeries and they're currently baking peanut butter cookies, I have to turn around and walk right back out. It happens at Walmart somewhat regularly. (Walmart is also big enough that I can just go to the other end of the store, too, but if I need something in the bakery/groceries side I'm boned.)
Then one day I was doing some shopping downtown and decided to go into the new Thai restaurant for lunch.
I know, I know: Thai food is usually RIDDLED with peanuts. I am (and WAS) fully aware of that fact. That's why, when I went inside, I asked the girl who greeted me at the door if they cooked with peanuts. AND SHE SAID "NO". What I SHOULD have done is insisted on speaking with the chef, but I didn't and took her word for it. Having been assured that their food didn't have peanuts, I decided to stay and ordered one of their lunch specials.
The first thing they brought me was a mango salad, and I took one bite and there were nuts in it. I flagged down a waitress and asked what kind of nuts they were. The girl said "peanuts, I think" and I was like WELL... FUCK. But it was too late, I had already swallowed some. So I told her what was up and she was like "oh shit should we call an ambulance? I'll call an ambulance!"
Here's where things started to REALLY go downhill. I was actually feeling FINE. I wasn't even getting the tingling in my mouth and throat, or the headache, or ANYTHING. So I was like "nah, don't bother, I'll just walk to the hospital, it's only like six blocks away anyway" BUT the chef INSISTED on calling an ambulance and THANK GOD HE DID.
I was sitting at a little table up at the front of the restaurant where the chef could keep an eye on me from the kitchen, talking to 911 on the restaurant's phone, and the woman on the other end of the line was asking how I was doing; how my breathing was, how my throat was, etc. and I still felt fine. UNTIL I SUDDENLY WENT BLIND. It was like someone just threw the power switch in my brain off and my vision abruptly went to like... TV static. Then I was falling sideways out of the chair I had been sitting on. I don't even remember hitting the ground.
The next thing I remember is coming around long enough to realize I was being wheeled out of the restaurant on a stretcher and telling them that they needed to bring my shopping buggy with us (because it had my purse and ID and everything in it, though I didn't articulate that at the time.) I don't remember actually being loaded into the ambulance, or the ride to the hospital, but I DO remember getting to the ER and having to go to the bathroom REALLY badly-- the body always flushes everything out of the system immediately before DEATH-- but being so far out of it I couldn't make it to the bathroom on my own so that was out. Then the next thing I remember is a brief blip of having doctors and nurses all around me, stripping my clothes off and hooking me up to IVs.
Then nothing.
When I woke up I had an IV in each arm (they couldn't pump the drugs into me fast enough with just one) and the crash cart was so close I could reach out and touch it. I felt like I'd been hit by a BUS, and they had left my gurney out in the middle of the floor, right in front of the nurse's station just in case. But through all that, I never had the tingly throat and never had trouble breathing. My body went straight from FINE to COMPLETE BRAIN SHUTDOWN in .5 seconds.
I survived. Barely. But it was a HUGE escalation from my previous peanut encounters.
Then I didn't have another exposure until this past December, when we had a potluck at work. Basically everyone brought desserts, and 99% of them were chocolate, which I wasn't interested in, but one person brought vanilla cupcakes and I thought SCORE! So on my break I went to have one. Only to discover that they had peanut butter chips inside them. :|
By the time I realized I had already swallowed a bite with who-knew-how-many chips in it, but I could tell from the TASTE that they were peanut butter. And again, I was like WELL FUCK. So I dug my epipen out of my bag and put it in my pocket and went to tell my manager what the deal was. I was supposed to be working drive-thru, but she but me on GSR for the remainder of my shift...
...but it didn't matter because as soon as the peanuts kicked in I spent the next 40 minutes in the bathroom with violent diarrhea and what would have been projectile vomiting if I hadn't had the gastric bypass 12 years ago. Then my face started to turn red, itch and swell up in hives. My eyes almost swelled shut. But again, no tingling in my mouth/throat or trouble breathing. When I finally stumbled out of the bathroom, one of the kids, Ethan, saw me and was like "ARE YOU ALRIGHT??" and I told him I had a peanut allergy and had had an exposure and he ran to tell the manager, which I had already done, but hey, I appreciated it nonetheless.
I was supposed to take the bus home that night but when I clocked out my manager drove me instead and halfway home she was like "nope, I'm taking you to the hospital" because I was dry-heaving into a bag the entire drive. So she dropped me off and I wandered my way inside... and the triage nurse took one look at me and BODILY DRAGGED ME into the back, where they stripped me and IVed me and gave me an epi shot.
I got in shit for not using my epipen, but I was under the impression it was only for when you couldn't breathe? So they dissuaded me of that notion, and the epi shot worked WONDERS. I felt better pretty much instantly, and then had to make the "hey Mom, you know how I was supposed to get home about now? Well I'm actually at the ER because PEANUTS" phone call. Fun times.
But again, my allergy was completely different. A lot more like the very first time I had an exposure, when I was just a baby. Every time I have an encounter with peanuts it's different, idk, man.
So I just avoid them when and where possible and a few years back I discovered Wow! Butter, which is made from soy and tastes so much like peanut butter that it actually makes the little alarm bells in my brain go off. But it's great for baking cookies and peanut butter dainties and that kind of thing, even if it is ungodly expensive. I keep a jar on hand at all times.
Recently I've been experimenting with sandwiches. I made myself a "peanut butter" and jam sandwich (I'm aware it's supposed to be jelly but we don't have any in the house) the other day, and then I bought some fluffernutter and made a "peanut butter", banana and fluffernutter sandwich because a character in a movie I watched a couple of weeks back was eating those and I thought they looked good. I think peanut butter sandwiches are somewhat of an acquired taste, but they're not bad. I do wish I had smooth Wow! Butter to use for sandwiches instead of the crunchy, I think that might make them better. (I like the crunchy for baking, though.)
Anyway, yeah, the Peanut Saga. More to come, I'm sure! :D;;
After that first time, for my whole childhood and my teenage years, we were very careful to keep me away from peanuts, but when exposures DID happen the reaction was usually relatively mild. Some tingling in my mouth and throat and mild nausea. I would come into physical contact with peanuts and peanut products as long as they didn't actually go INSIDE ME, and that counted my eyes as we found out one day when I was around seven, when I handed some peanuts to Lee and then proceeded to rub my eyes. They swelled completely closed. I don't remember it, but I imagine it wasn't a fun time. Also people could cook/bake with peanuts/peanut butter with me around and I was fine.
But when I got into my twenties my allergy started getting worse. First it was headaches; I would still get the tingly mouth and throat and the nausea, but I would also get a WHOPPER of a migraine. About that time it also became impossible for people to cook/bake with peanuts with me around, because the aerosolized oils got into my lungs and caused me to have massive asthma attacks. Even someone just spreading peanut butter on warm toast bothers me, but not enough to tell them to stop. Sometimes when I go into stores that have their own bakeries and they're currently baking peanut butter cookies, I have to turn around and walk right back out. It happens at Walmart somewhat regularly. (Walmart is also big enough that I can just go to the other end of the store, too, but if I need something in the bakery/groceries side I'm boned.)
Then one day I was doing some shopping downtown and decided to go into the new Thai restaurant for lunch.
I know, I know: Thai food is usually RIDDLED with peanuts. I am (and WAS) fully aware of that fact. That's why, when I went inside, I asked the girl who greeted me at the door if they cooked with peanuts. AND SHE SAID "NO". What I SHOULD have done is insisted on speaking with the chef, but I didn't and took her word for it. Having been assured that their food didn't have peanuts, I decided to stay and ordered one of their lunch specials.
The first thing they brought me was a mango salad, and I took one bite and there were nuts in it. I flagged down a waitress and asked what kind of nuts they were. The girl said "peanuts, I think" and I was like WELL... FUCK. But it was too late, I had already swallowed some. So I told her what was up and she was like "oh shit should we call an ambulance? I'll call an ambulance!"
Here's where things started to REALLY go downhill. I was actually feeling FINE. I wasn't even getting the tingling in my mouth and throat, or the headache, or ANYTHING. So I was like "nah, don't bother, I'll just walk to the hospital, it's only like six blocks away anyway" BUT the chef INSISTED on calling an ambulance and THANK GOD HE DID.
I was sitting at a little table up at the front of the restaurant where the chef could keep an eye on me from the kitchen, talking to 911 on the restaurant's phone, and the woman on the other end of the line was asking how I was doing; how my breathing was, how my throat was, etc. and I still felt fine. UNTIL I SUDDENLY WENT BLIND. It was like someone just threw the power switch in my brain off and my vision abruptly went to like... TV static. Then I was falling sideways out of the chair I had been sitting on. I don't even remember hitting the ground.
The next thing I remember is coming around long enough to realize I was being wheeled out of the restaurant on a stretcher and telling them that they needed to bring my shopping buggy with us (because it had my purse and ID and everything in it, though I didn't articulate that at the time.) I don't remember actually being loaded into the ambulance, or the ride to the hospital, but I DO remember getting to the ER and having to go to the bathroom REALLY badly-- the body always flushes everything out of the system immediately before DEATH-- but being so far out of it I couldn't make it to the bathroom on my own so that was out. Then the next thing I remember is a brief blip of having doctors and nurses all around me, stripping my clothes off and hooking me up to IVs.
Then nothing.
When I woke up I had an IV in each arm (they couldn't pump the drugs into me fast enough with just one) and the crash cart was so close I could reach out and touch it. I felt like I'd been hit by a BUS, and they had left my gurney out in the middle of the floor, right in front of the nurse's station just in case. But through all that, I never had the tingly throat and never had trouble breathing. My body went straight from FINE to COMPLETE BRAIN SHUTDOWN in .5 seconds.
I survived. Barely. But it was a HUGE escalation from my previous peanut encounters.
Then I didn't have another exposure until this past December, when we had a potluck at work. Basically everyone brought desserts, and 99% of them were chocolate, which I wasn't interested in, but one person brought vanilla cupcakes and I thought SCORE! So on my break I went to have one. Only to discover that they had peanut butter chips inside them. :|
By the time I realized I had already swallowed a bite with who-knew-how-many chips in it, but I could tell from the TASTE that they were peanut butter. And again, I was like WELL FUCK. So I dug my epipen out of my bag and put it in my pocket and went to tell my manager what the deal was. I was supposed to be working drive-thru, but she but me on GSR for the remainder of my shift...
...but it didn't matter because as soon as the peanuts kicked in I spent the next 40 minutes in the bathroom with violent diarrhea and what would have been projectile vomiting if I hadn't had the gastric bypass 12 years ago. Then my face started to turn red, itch and swell up in hives. My eyes almost swelled shut. But again, no tingling in my mouth/throat or trouble breathing. When I finally stumbled out of the bathroom, one of the kids, Ethan, saw me and was like "ARE YOU ALRIGHT??" and I told him I had a peanut allergy and had had an exposure and he ran to tell the manager, which I had already done, but hey, I appreciated it nonetheless.
I was supposed to take the bus home that night but when I clocked out my manager drove me instead and halfway home she was like "nope, I'm taking you to the hospital" because I was dry-heaving into a bag the entire drive. So she dropped me off and I wandered my way inside... and the triage nurse took one look at me and BODILY DRAGGED ME into the back, where they stripped me and IVed me and gave me an epi shot.
I got in shit for not using my epipen, but I was under the impression it was only for when you couldn't breathe? So they dissuaded me of that notion, and the epi shot worked WONDERS. I felt better pretty much instantly, and then had to make the "hey Mom, you know how I was supposed to get home about now? Well I'm actually at the ER because PEANUTS" phone call. Fun times.
But again, my allergy was completely different. A lot more like the very first time I had an exposure, when I was just a baby. Every time I have an encounter with peanuts it's different, idk, man.
So I just avoid them when and where possible and a few years back I discovered Wow! Butter, which is made from soy and tastes so much like peanut butter that it actually makes the little alarm bells in my brain go off. But it's great for baking cookies and peanut butter dainties and that kind of thing, even if it is ungodly expensive. I keep a jar on hand at all times.
Recently I've been experimenting with sandwiches. I made myself a "peanut butter" and jam sandwich (I'm aware it's supposed to be jelly but we don't have any in the house) the other day, and then I bought some fluffernutter and made a "peanut butter", banana and fluffernutter sandwich because a character in a movie I watched a couple of weeks back was eating those and I thought they looked good. I think peanut butter sandwiches are somewhat of an acquired taste, but they're not bad. I do wish I had smooth Wow! Butter to use for sandwiches instead of the crunchy, I think that might make them better. (I like the crunchy for baking, though.)
Anyway, yeah, the Peanut Saga. More to come, I'm sure! :D;;
I have several of the Supernatural novels. There are 17 in the set, and I have the first 8, and I would really like to get the rest of them, so I went to my beloved thriftbooks.com to see if they had them (it's where I got most of the ones I already own.) And they HAVE them, they just have them in NEW CONDITION, which means I'm BONED because they WON'T SHIP NEW BOOKS OUTSIDE THE USA FOR SOME REASON. :<
Nevermore
Witch's Canyon
Bone Key
Heart of the Dragon
The Unholy Cause
War of the Sons
One Year Gone
Coyote's Kiss
Night Terror
Rite of Passage
Fresh Meat
Carved In Flesh
Cold Fire
Mythmaker
The Usual Sacrifices
Joyride
Children of Anubis
I think thriftbooks had three that weren't New that I could order, but the other six I need to find elsewhere. I checked on ebay and they are AVAILABLE there but each book has like $15.95 shipping which like... NO? I'm going to see if Amazon has them, I guess, because the shipping would be free for me since I'm a Prime member. Barring that I can maybe ask Chelsea if I can have them shipped to her address from thriftbooks and then get her to forward them to me. I dunno. Just trying to get books, here. :|
Witch's Canyon
Bone Key
Heart of the Dragon
The Unholy Cause
War of the Sons
One Year Gone
Coyote's Kiss
Night Terror
Rite of Passage
Fresh Meat
Carved In Flesh
Cold Fire
Mythmaker
The Usual Sacrifices
Joyride
Children of Anubis
I think thriftbooks had three that weren't New that I could order, but the other six I need to find elsewhere. I checked on ebay and they are AVAILABLE there but each book has like $15.95 shipping which like... NO? I'm going to see if Amazon has them, I guess, because the shipping would be free for me since I'm a Prime member. Barring that I can maybe ask Chelsea if I can have them shipped to her address from thriftbooks and then get her to forward them to me. I dunno. Just trying to get books, here. :|
