What you should NEVER say to someone with severe allergies... EVER!

For most of you reading this and know me, you know that my allergies are... a lot. <-- and that's putting it "mildly". For as long as I can remember, I've been allergic to life, except peanut butter. I still haven't been able to figure that one out. Anyway, over the course of my 30+ years, I've been asked a variety of questions about my allergies (food and year round... nope, I don't get seasonal. That's an every day occurrence for me... yay.).  As I've grown and started to understand what I can and cannot do when it comes to my allergies, some of these questions I've been asked went from far fetch to "are you serious?". So here are a few you should NEVER say to someone with severe allergies... EVER! I mean, EVER!

It's all in your head.

Tell that to my hives & closing throat next time I have an allergy attack that it's 

"all in my head".

If you expose yourself to your allergen, your body will develop an immunity to it.

 

Placing myself around my allergens not only ruins my day, but it takes dayS for me to get back to some type of normalcy,... so placing myself amongst cats or being outside when flowers are in bloom, yeah, NOT gonna happen!

If you leave the room, won't you just get better right away?

If it were only THAT easy. Guess what? It's NOT! As mentioned above, it takes dayS for me to get back to some type of normalcy, and I start looking more like Katrina & less like Hitch. Meh...

Won't you just grow out of it?

 Despite what the "studies" show, not everyone's allergies change over the course of 7 years. For some of us "lucky" ones, we develop new allergies or the ones we already have seem to get worse over the course of time. So growing out of it? No. According to my body, I'm apparently just getting started!

Why do you have to be so picky?

 No, No, NO! Not even close. Trust me, I wish I could have scrambled eggs or a piece of blackberry pie, but guess what? NOT an option. It's not me that's picky. It's my immune system that affords me this "luxury".

Can't you just take a Benadryl? 

Despite what you might think, Benadryl is not a multivitamin for those of us with allergies (that's what Zyrtec is for). Even though Benadryl is a GREAT drug for minimizing the effects allergies, the side affects of it are less than desirable. Sure, I can take a Benadryl... when I get home and don't have any other type of a social obligations for the rest of the day... yup!

We didn't invite you because we figured you were allergic to the food.

Yup. This has happened. I know I should live in a bubble of some sort, but to not invite me somewhere because I might be allergic to food is a bit much. I can always get food after or if I know the menu ahead of time, I'll eat before hand. 

Rude... just Rude!

So despite what you think of those of us with allergies and how we live our lives, please please PLEASE reserve the judgment for something that's within our control. We can't help it any more than our bodies can. I wish I wasn't allergic to eggs or I didn't have to read Every Single Label to make sure there's no Aloe Vera in the products I want to use (Yes, I'm allergic to that too. Yay me!). I would love nothing more than to not be allergic to life. I'm sure you have things in your life when people ask about them, you're like "are you kidding me?" It's sort of the same thing. 

I'll jump off of my soap box now!

 

xoxox