Some allergists recommend milk or egg “ladders” to their mildly allergic patients, where small amounts of baked foods containing the allergen are introduced and gradually increased over time, hopefully leading to desensitization. Needless to say, such interventions should be done under the close supervision of a physician and should have full buy-in from the patient.
This installment of our popular You Be the Judge series looks at one such case, where a woman is faced with the decision to stop the treatment despite her parents’ insistence.
This story comes from a reddit post a few weeks ago entitled: “AITA for embarrassing my parents in public over an allergy?” We often refer to the “AITA” subreddit (i.e., group) where this story is posted. AITA is short for “Am I the A-Hole,” providing a medium for people to question their own behavior and ask readers to vote.
Here’s her story:
(19F) have been allergic to dairy since I was a baby. My doctor and parents had a whole schedule for the first half of my life to get me acclimated to dairy. It went from me throwing up every night as a baby to the point where I could eat a pretty unrestricted diet and have no real symptoms other than stomach pain when I was in middle school.
This sounds kind of stupid lol but it took me until a couple of months ago to realise that the stomach pain is actually a symptom and not a thing I just need to deal with. I was on a school trip and asked if I could have the dairy-free meals (because I knew my stomach would feel icky from motion sickness and traveling) and I actually ended up feeling great, so ever since coming back to university I’ve basically gone dairy-free and my digestion has been great. However, because I now have lost all my tolerance for dairy, even very little makes me nearly as sick as when I was a really young child.
I’ve told my parents this and they basically said “Do whatever you want at school but we didn’t spend nearly two decades getting you used to dairy just to cut it out now, that’s a lot of time wasted.” I had to go home recently for a family event that my parents hosted and we had a big family meal with a lot of extended relatives where nearly everything had dairy. I tried scraping sauce and cheese off of stuff but I ingested some anyway clearly because I felt gross and spent a lot of time in the bathroom.
At one point my mother got annoyed at me for leaving the table so much (I was leaving a lot) and said kind of angrily, “Why are you being so rude at this event?” This annoyed me because I didn’t feel I was being rude, I was sick, so I said to her “Why don’t you take my allergy seriously? You’re the reason I’ve been eating stuff that makes me sick for all my life.”
The issue is that I think that was kind of harsh of me. My parents do believe I have an allergy, they just also believe they cured it with the diet plan my doctor had me on. And they’ve told me that they only pursued it because my doctor said it could increase my quality of life to not have an allergy–which, to be fair, when I was on this plan I was able to digest more without getting sick, my stomach just hurt a lot. I feel like I may’ve been unnecessarily rude in how I reacted to my mother, and I’m also worried I drew attention to myself that wasn’t needed (a lot of my relatives were asking if I was okay after dinner, which was kind of them but really not the focus of the event).
Edit: I appreciate everybody telling me I’m lactose intolerant. I am not. I have been to several doctors throughout my life and gotten actual allergy tests. I am allergic to the dairy protein. If the symptoms I’ve shared sound like lactose intolerance, that’s very interesting and good to know, but the one thing I am certain about is the diagnoses I have received.
So now we turn to you, our readers, who have dealt with food allergies from every angle and can provide insight the average reddit user simply doesn’t have.
How would you have handled the situation from the woman’s perspective? How about from the parents’? Have you encountered anything similar in your or your child’s food allergy journey?
Sound off in the comments section below and share your insights.
My main comment is: I feel sorry for all parties involved. I believe milk is the hardest allergy to “cure” via OIT, and I believe the girl when she says she gets a stomach ache. If it were me, I would keep doing OIT given how pervasive milk is and the dangers of anaphylaxis, but I also understand not wanting a stomach ache all the time. She should have tried lactaid before giving up the protection of milk tolerance. Other than that, it’s her life.
I am so sorry they have put you through this all your life. Worse yet, they did it knowingly. I admit I did it to one of my kids but I didn’t know any better. I truly thought allergies were strictly hives and anaphylactic. I have since learned that allergy is so much more.
I have a granddaughter that is allergic to the proteins in milk and a daughter that is highly sensitive to an ingredient in the feed for dairy cows. Since we also have a myriad of other allergies in the family, creative cooking is a thing at my house when we have gatherings.
I hope your parents understand one day. My mother didn’t get it until she nearly had to take me to hospital while visiting her at age 55.