Living with allergies can be overwhelming for anyone, but when the body is reacting to over 100 different kinds of allergies at one time, it can be maddening and very painful. Allergies are by nature confusing, as the body responds to substances that are not generally considered harmful. So what happens when a person cannot be around over 100 foods or substances? Here are some real life stories.
Tyler Savage, a 12-year-old boy from Essex, England, first began getting sick at the age of six. At that time even the smallest amount of food would create an agony of sickness. He began to lose drastic amounts of weight. The doctors told his parents that he was suffering from a stomach infection. When he began to lose energy and became unable to play with other children, doctors decide to remove his appendix. This helped for a time, but did not solve the problem.
More tests did not reveal anything, until he was referred to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. There he had extensive tests on this stomach and bowels, which uncovered a rare condition in his intestines called eosinophilic enteropathy, which makes the intestines over produce white blood cells. This rare condition caused significant weight loss, as he was becoming undernourished.
Treating Tyler started with a nose tube that got food directly into his stomach. Later doctors inserted a tube directly into his stomach, which has allowed him to return to a bit more normal life, and able to attend school. He is not out of the woods but has come a long way.
Tyler suffers from over 100 allergies, so many in fact that he is only able to eat five foods: apples, potatoes, grapes, carrots and chicken. He also has vitamins and minerals pumped directly through his tube in his stomach.
Andrea McLean has learned through the years that she has little tolerance for hundreds of foods. Beginning with food poisoning when she backpacking through India, she spent 24 hours being violently ill. However on returning home, she still did not feel up to par. She was constantly tired, lethargic and had intense intestinal problems.
No matter what doctor she consulted, her tests would always come back negative. She was told instead that it was an allergy to dairy. When she discontinued eating dairy, she was back to her old self.
She experimented with food she could eat. Even today if she cheats and sneaks a bite of a creamy dessert, it only takes minutes for the symptoms to arise and send her to her bed with a blinding headache.
Other food allergies began to appear: peppers, garlic, and some nuts would cause her to swell around her face within a short time after ingesting them. Other villains her life were raw vegetables.
Allergies can be life threatening, although most result in minor irritations such as runny nose but can range to a severe swelling of the face and throat that can be fatal.
