Allergies

I think I’m allergic to bananas. I was on a plane last week in the Comfort Zone on Delta Airlines. We had to pay a little extra for the Comfort Zone, but we got three more inches of legroom. We also ate fancier snacks. Instead of handing us a tiny bag of pretzels, the flight attendants offered a basket of perfectly ripe bananas and cookies and crackers, and we were allowed to take more than one item. I selected a banana and a bag of chocolate-covered crunchy berry snacks. 

After I started munching on the banana, I recalled that I may be allergic to them.

Just recently bananas have been making my throat itch a little. I ate half the banana on the flight before I remembered this. Then I thought, as I sat there in the Comfort Zone, it would make a good anecdote if I had an allergic reaction to a bite of banana on the flight. That is, if I lived through the allergic reaction. Do they have epi-pens on planes? You know what they are — the shots of epinephrine that will save your life if you’re suffocating due to an allergic reaction to bananas at 30,000 feet.  

My friend told me that due to a tick bite, she is allergic to mammal meat. She cannot eat beef, pork, or bison. I’m not making this up, and it must be true because my friend is a physician, and physicians don’t make stuff up unless there’s a fellow physician who is an annoying jerk and they are trying to fool him.

The tick effect is called an Alpha Galactose allergy which sounds like an allergy to science fiction movies about distant galaxies, but that’s not what it is. My friend was bitten by a tick, and maybe the tick was allergic to beef, pork, and bison and passed it on. I don’t know.

Do ticks bite cattle and pigs and bison? I’m guessing ticks bite anything that bleeds, nasty little suckers.

Now my friend cannot eat steak, pork chops, bison, or platypuses or even platypus eggs because of course a platypus is a mammal — an egg-laying mammal that God invented to screw with zoologists’ minds. Until we discovered platypuses, scientists assumed mammals did not lay eggs. Actually, I’m not sure if the Alpha Galactose allergy means you can’t eat platypuses or their eggs, but it makes sense.

So here’s your helpful hint for the day: if you have ever been bitten by a tick, keep a bottle of Benadryl nearby when you eat mammal meat. You may have the Alpha Galactose allergy and not know it. And don’t eat stuff you’re allergic to while flying on an airplane. Flight attendants would rather not have to stick you with an epi-pen when your throat closes up. And do pay extra for the Comfort Zone. The crunchy berry snack is delicious and pairs well with platypus milk.

Please weigh in with a comment. If you’ve been bitten by a tick, do you have the Alpha Galactose allergy? Please give us your worst tick story.