Dinner and an Emergency

I’m great fun to take on a date.

Lorna got home yesterday after being up Nawth for a week to visit her parents. She has a bad day at work today, comes home, and announces we are going out for dinner. Cool by me. We go to a place called the Northstar Diner. It’s relatively new, in Weaverville, and has some great health food stuff. I usually have a burger (with real meat) while Lorna has something weird. Tonight Lorna had a salad, stir fry with shrimp, and a sampler of local beer (six 30z samples for only $3!). I had a chicken sammich with bacon, provolone, and lettuce. Oh, and fries. Yummy.

We decide we wanted dessert. Lorna got something gross. I think some sort of raisin bread with white sauce poured on top. Or something like that. I had a freakin’ fantastic chocolate oatmeal cookie.

Here’s where it gets fun.

I have about 1/3 to a 1/2 of my cookie when I realize it is actually a chocolate oatmeal WALNUT cookie. I am allergic to walnuts. My reaction to walnuts is the good kind – swelling of the throat and tongue. We call the waitress over, ask what’s the nut, and proceed to freak her out. I hope she told the tale to the management so they will remember to mention it has WALNUTS in the cookie. And it was a great cookie, too! We usually ask when I order a new dessert, especially if it is one with a lot of ingredients or typically has walnuts in it. But the board out front and the waitress only mentioned chocolate and oatmeal so neither of us asked. Several years ago I had a bite, a tiny bite, of baklava that had walnuts instead of almonds. We think it must have been rather oily walnuts since I reacted to that little bite. So when we realized how much of that cookie I had eaten and the number of walnuts now staging protests within my bloodstream….

Lorna can sober up really fast. I watched it happen. She’d had those beer samples and most of a pint glass of Greenman Porter. I drank my ice tea and paid attention to what my body was telling me. Do we go next door and get benedryl and take me home? Or do we go just a few more doors down to the St. Joseph’s Urgent Care? We decide to do the urgent care.

Luckily there was no one waiting and they saw me almost immediately. I was given a shot of benedryl and observed for a while. The swelling was minimal from what he could see but from my coughing, we all assumed it was further down in my bronchial thingies. We talked with the doc about what we should do next or if this ever happens again. Because this allergy is rather new to me and it is only my third known exposure and reaction, there is the big possibility the next reaction will be worse. He agreed coming to them was best. We decided to not do the steroid shot and instead take some by mouth then and for the next four days.

I was kinda stoned from the shot but am doing semi-decent now. I had far too much sweet tea though which is keeping me awake long after I should have collapsed. A large part of me is still afraid, ya know? Right now my chest and throat feels like I had an asthma attack.