| How Much Longer |
[Jan. 22nd, 2016|02:02 am]
spaceintheway
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It started with onions and garlic. After many years of thinking he had a sensitive stomach and various possible gastrointestinal issues, my husband figured out that he had a food allergy. Annoying and frustrating, but as soon as he cut the onions and garlic from his diet, his digestive issues started going away. Yay!
But cutting the ingredients alone wasn't enough. He started to notice reactions to other things that didn't obviously have onions and garlic. Dried food that had "natural spices" as one of its ingredients. Canned vegetables from companies that also spiced versions. Salads at restaurants where the same cutting board was used for the onions as well as the tomatoes. Breads baked in the same room with onion rolls. The list of what he can eat without a reaction has been getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
And the reaction has been getting harder and harder to deal with. Eating a contaminated food will cause gastrointestinal pain and problems for 3 to 5 days. Eating or being around an airborne contaminant will cause itching, burning scalp for 3 to 5 days as well. Either can trigger extreme irritability or depression. Fortunately that usually only lasts an hour or so, but it doesn't take long for the feeling to spread to the rest of us. And every time he reacts to something he has a panic attack until he can figure out what might have triggered it, what else he needs to add to his poison list.
I don't know how much longer he can go on this way. He loved cooking, but what's left to cook with? He can't go back to work because he can't go anywhere there might be other people's food. I mean that. He's had a reaction to walking the dog past a Mexican restaurant, to riding in a car with a bag of fast-food leftovers, to our kids cooking a toaster pizza or microwaving a pot pie. He's now trapped in this tiny, messy house, knowing that he's making our lives more difficult, knowing that he can't do the things he used to for the family, knowing that he's not able to make money to help fix some of the things that would make all of our lives better.
I don't know how he manages to maintain any semblance of coping, because I'm finding it harder and harder as the days go by. I didn't have enough time to manage everything that needed doing before this, and now? There's days when all I want to do is curl up in a ball and cry... but someone has to get a paycheck, someone has to make sure the kids get to school and do their homework and find something they can eat every day. Someone has to maintain optimism long enough to start over with another allergy doctor who might take the time to help instead of handing off the problem. Someone has to believe that things can get better... but I don't know how much longer that someone can be me. |
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