OMG, I'm getting married!
No, I'm not.
Moving on.
For several years I suffered a menagerie of allergy symptoms that presented as everything from a mildly annoying itchy eyeball to a First Class ticket to bronchitis. Even with health insurance, I spent several hundred dollars every month on co-pays, prescription and non-prescription medications, breathing treatments, acupuncture, herbs, distilled water for the humidifier, filters for the air purifier … I was constantly sick and constantly pissed off at being sick.
Oooh, banana bread!
Then, in early 2015, I decided to travel the world. Well, parts of it. I chose destinations based on where friends lived and whether they were willing to take me in for extended stays. This would be no extended vacation exactly, though my visits would, indeed, be for extended periods of time. Yeses were extended all around.
Primary Goals
- Continue to work, albeit remotely, to test whether working remotely worked for me.
- Earn my keep by participating with friends and their families in all aspects of the care
and keeping of households as needed and per instructions. - Participate fully in the cultural and familial norms of those families with whom I stayed, including, but not limited to, what to eat and when.
And so it was that for the first time in a long time—years, in fact—I went for an extended period of time without eating bananas.
It’s not that bananas weren’t around. Bananas are everywhere and everywhere my friends are. Where there are bunches of Mitch’s friends, there are bunches of bananas.
It’s that some of my friends, those in Italy in particular, don’t eat bananas every day. They sure as biscuits don’t put bananas in their daily protein shakes. They also don’t drink protein shakes.
Enter the Elimination Diet
I did not deliberately remove items from my diet in order to test what may, or may not, be causing my allergies. Though I was familiar with the elimination diet, I hadn't given any thought to giving it a go. I mean, I vomit when I eat mushrooms, but that’s because mushrooms are disgusting. Otherwise, I tolerate most things well and just stay away from mushrooms and anything with a mushroom-like taste or texture (e.g., shrimp, pudding, gelatin, jelly, oysters, oatmeal, okra and overripe bananas). Not picky at all.
But by consuming only those foods that my host friends and family consumed, I did, inadvertently, participate in an elimination diet wherein I did, by sheer accident or luck, eliminate bananas from my diet.
Then, I went to an Italian Walmart-like super market called Big Store.
Then, I walked the produce section.
Then, I spotted bananas.
Then, I thought, “Hey, I haven’t had bananas in a while.”
Then, I bought bananas.
Then, after dinner that night, when it’s customary to follow the main course with fruit and a digestive, I ate half a banana.
Then, my face exploded.
It turns out I am allergic to bananas.
It also turns out that suffering from a menagerie of allergy symptoms that presents as everything from a mildly annoying itchy eyeball to a First Class ticket to bronchitis may very well be a food sensitivity and that the removal of said food may very well reduce, or eliminate, one’s menagerie of allergy symptoms.
How can you be sure the culprit of your discomfort is said food and not an incidence of pure coincidence?
Don’t eat it for a long time.
Then, eat it.
In Italy or, as it turns out, everywhere, I didn’t need Zyrtec or Flonase or breathing treatments or steroids or nose strips or humidifiers or air purifiers or needles or co-pays. I just needed to rid my stomach, and my life, of bananas.
Fucking bananas.
Yes, Minions are cute. My eyeball itches.
So as we round out our first quarter of the new year, allow me to offer a few lines of advice: save yourself the time, the energy, the medication and the money you spend on trying to fix yourself and just rid your life of your bananas.
Fuck bananas.