Monthly Archives: October 2019

Allergies are Terrifying

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As some of you may know, I’ve had issues with gluten for a while. About 8 years ago, I had to cut it out of my diet. I had expected that to be the end of things that I’d have to cut from my diet. I’m still not entirely over that loss. It’s hard to constantly fear what should be a nurturing substance. At restaurants, I’d always second guess what I was put into my body. I’d generally adapted to it, but there would be times when it’d get the best of me. Like when I’d be at a conference and all the food, including the salad, would have wheat in it. I’d get frustrated and in some cases my blood sugar would drop, because I’m also hypoglycemic.

Sadly, that wasn’t even the first thing I had to cut. I figured out I was lactose intolerant 14 years ago. I’d have horrible reactions to it. I also figured out that cheese wasn’t the best for me, but I still kept eating it because of how good it tastes and how it’s on just about everything.

More recently, I’ve found out why I should be avoiding cheese. I’m allergic to basically the entire world. I’m allergic to beef, dairy (no butter for cooking either!), lamb, flowers (like chamomile, hibiscus, elderflower), all environmental allergens, almonds, hazelnuts, ginger, juniper (no gin, boo), kiwis, citric acid, and probably more. I learned all this in the past two-three months. Now, going out to eat is even riskier.

To address this, I’ve started immunotherapy. This is the process of introducing you, gradually, to an increasing amount of the allergens. The goal is to desensitize you to the allergens. The process is a series of increasing dosage and/or molarity of the allergen in a shot. I started that about 2 weeks ago. However, since the third round of these shots I’ve been on the edge of serious allergic reactions. The slightest thing has made my throat tighten, sent my heart racing, and increased my blood pressure.

On Friday, I reacted badly to ginger. I ended up in the ER because of it. I was treated an released after a couple hours with additional care instructions. Since then, I’ve been dealing with reactions whenever I’m outside walking the dogs.

If you know anyone with food allergies, please make sure you take them seriously. If you see them taking something while eating, check on them. If they look flushed while eating check on them. If they seem slow to respond while eating and seem loopy, check on them. Then take them to the hospital.

To help with my reactions, I’m making business cards to give to servers at restaurants. This will help ensure that I tell them all the allergies I have and they don’t have to remember them. They can give the list to the chef and hopefully, will be able to find me food that I can eat.

I don’t really think all the loss of the foods has sunk in on me yet either. I think that’s mostly because I’ve been just responding to my body. Not really dwelling on this. Given the seriousness of my reactions, I suspect this will be easy at first to deal with. Hopefully, it won’t be permanent and I can resume immunotherapy.

On staying in your lane

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I was listening to Pandora this morning and Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth (The there’s something happenin’ here song) came on. This got me thinking about the protests that I saw this morning (10/19/19) in London, the People’s Vote March. I think it’s fair to say that musicians – and artists in general – represent the emotional conscience of the community they’ve come out of. I think it’s also fair to include a lot of professional athletes and some of in their management structure, some NBA coaches more than anyone else there

Since, I grew up in the 80’s in a very white and conservative part of the country, I don’t think I really understood the general bias, in my community, against using music and award ceremony speeches as a valid platform of protest. I’m sad to say this generally stuck with me throughout my life. I don’t think I’m the only one that grew up in a community like mine who has this bias.

I think this “stay in your lane” approach to the arts in general and some professional athletes (I say some because white male athletes have more often been celebrated for speaking up than people of color or white women). Now, I know this isn’t anything ground breaking. If you look on #BlackTwitter and follow POC in general, you’ll see that this community has been well aware of this phenomenon. In fact, I would say I’m agreeing with their sentiment here. I believe this was a deliberate action to discredit these protests and minimize what these artists and athletes are saying. I think with the advent of television, specifically ramping up after the Vietnam war.

In one of the #1619Project’s stories there were clear cases where white slave owners intentionally prevented slaves from creating music and art. Because, those white slave owners knew the power of the arts. They knew that it’s easier to share information in song and get people’s emotionally invested by using music. This is why political campaigns do it now and why in movies music plays such an integral role in driving emotional response to scenes.

I think I first came aware of this during the Dixie Chick’s protest of George W. Bush’s wars. At the time, I was pretty firmly in the camp of staying in your lane, but I struggled with how to respond, because I agreed with them. I wasn’t a fan of their music and I knew it put them at huge professional risk. Especially, given that most of their audience supported the wars (country music y’all).

So this puts me in mind, how do we support these protesters. One, is obvious, add your voice to theirs. Tweet their message. Support politicians that support protesters. Go out and join a demonstration (this last one is the one I struggle with the most and it bothers me).

Second, is to protest organizations that support something you believe should be stopped. This can occur in a few different ways. First is to boycott that organization. So, I’m going to stop playing Blizzard games until they reverse their ban on the Hearthstones players that have protested for Hong Kong. In fact, I literally just uninstalled all the games. Furthermore, I won’t buy another game from the company until they change their protest policies.

Third, you can directly support artists/athletes/esports pros protesting something you believe should be protested. That can be in the form of buying whatever it is they create. You could donate to charities they support and/or are on boards of. You can also directly support them, if they have some sort of fundraising action going on. Although, if you’re going to be doing the last one, it may make more sense to provide that money directly to the people with less of a platform.

Another change, which I think is harder, is to help people understand why it’s important we allow our artists/athletes/esports pros to speak out. They have a platform that can amplify a cause. Some day that cause could be yours. If you hadn’t supported and, in fact, encouraged these people to speak out, then they might not be able to speak out for your cause.

As I said earlier, I’m not saying anything new that other people haven’t said before and probably said more eloquently. I’m simply adding my voice to that and working to unwind the stigma of speaking out against injustice no matter who you are. We need more protests songs, we need more protest art, we need more athletes to speak out against the horrors being committed all around us. Support them.