Why I'm Giving Up Gluten & Boba (Temporarily?!)
AKA, I have an EpiPen now.
April 2025. Adulthood is all about achieving a delicate balance. Some days you feel like you’ve really made it and everything is firing on all cylinders — the professional is successful, the personal is getting out of its own way and making headway, and your hobbies, well, they exist.
And then one day, you get home from your professional life with full-body itching, which you think is just the intense eczema you occasionally get, but it’s getting unbearable and it turns out it’s a red full-body rash that turns into PANIC! That turns into an emergency room visit where the doctor says, “If you were going to have anaphylaxis, you’d have it by now” and he gives you prednisone pills (too much???)1 and that turns into facial, hand and feet swelling2 overnight that turns into 🚨 ANAPHYLAXIS34 🚨 that turns into a second ER visit with a lot of yelling “What did you eat? What did you take??” and no one is Noah Wyle5 ☹️ that turns into your first shot of epinephrine that turns into “we’ve done all we can for you, you’ll be fine, don’t forget to pay the parking valet” but you’re still swollen and covered in hives that turns into blood tests and more blood tests and EpiPens and Pepcid (??) that turns into your parents are here and you can’t see out of your still swollen eyes so of course that means you can’t teach or drive and that turns into more doctors visits that turn into the delicate balance of your adult life falling to the wayside (temporarily??) while you panic every time you scratch yourself and see if there’s a new red rash or twenty while constantly googling “anaphylaxis” that turns into a long list of things that can potentially kill you, but still waiting on the final word on that.
It was a long week in April. It’s been a long recovery.
This ER did not have Noah Wyle
Yes, this is a food newsletter, but as I’ve written before, food allergies are a big part of being a foodie. I’ve scrutinized everything I ate and did that fateful Wednesday in April more times than I can count; I have a long Notes app timeline of that entire 48-hour period for every time a doctor interrogates me.
In the weeks after, I had to eliminate many, many potential allergens (gluten6 is one, because of my family history), which left my diet consisting mostly of me cooking:
- potato
- baked potato
- something I call baked potato nachos, which I make with baby potatoes
Soon, my diet thankfully expanded past “potato” and “meat” info coffee, chocolate, and ginger ale, among other things. On a personal note, painfully eliminated from my diet was:
- emotional support boba
Why? Because I had teas (boba and not) within that fateful 48-hour period and, as the ER attending physician yelled at me several times during ER visit #2:
“The tea is suspicious.”
…so I gave up boba cold turkey. I may have cried a little.
But within two weeks, I lost the weight I’ve been trying to lose for 3 years. As a millennial half-Asian, this is hard to admit, but…I guess boba…is…bad…for me.
I miss you.
More thoughts from this time:
- I had a prednisone-induced dream in which my only thought was “They need to stop playing Empire of the Sun at every journalism happy hour.” And several weeks later, I went to a journalism happy hour at a bar that played an Empire of the Sun song. Fair?
- Otherwise, being on the highest dose of prednisone every day for a week is terrible. I don’t recommend it.
- I also don’t recommend trying to do a supported yoga headstand (Salamba Shirshasana) while on prednisone, either. Bad news.
- But prednisone did make me weirdly productive and helped me finish the post on Orange Circle. And it made me apply for a lot of temporary summer gigs, including the two for which I was hired several weeks later.
- On that note, the run-on sentence that began this post? I had the idea to write that while on prednisone and furiously worked on it the whole week (while on prednisone). I kept it because it really captures the essence of what those two days were like.
- EpiPen fashion is a thing. Look at this cute carrying case I bought.
I don’t have an ending to this story yet; I’m in the process of more testing to figure out what the hell happened (my allergist said it could’ve been anything!). But if you’re wondering, “Why did Mallory not teach or respond to emails for a week in April?” or “Why hasn’t she posted about food lately?” Well, this is why.
Going to end this post with a video about allergies from one of my favorite TikTokers.
@gettothepointbroTHIS VIDEO WAS FILMED DURING AN ALLERGY ATTACK 🦠
According to several doctors I’ve seen since, yes, it was too much. ↩
This is indeed called angioedema. Turns out, Will Smith should’ve gone to the hospital in Hitch, but that would be less funny than chugging on Benadryl. ↩
There’s something called biphasic anaphylaxis, which is (according to Healthline) “a recurrence of anaphylaxis after appropriate treatment. It happens with no additional exposure to the allergen. Think of it as anaphylaxis, part two.” ↩
I also didn’t know I had anaphylaxis until the hospital, upon discharge, handed me some paperwork that essentially said, “So, you had anaphylaxis…” ↩
An ER icon and one of my first adolescent crushes. He can still get it. Let me dream of meeting him one day (but under better circumstances, I hope). ↩
I have since cheated and had gluten. It was good and I didn’t get a reaction, but I’ve been staying away (mostly) out of an abundance of caution. ↩
