Friday, July 25, 2008

boo vegetables

I always knew I was meant to be a carnivore. This was confirmed today by my allergy test; while the results need to be substantiated by some bloodwork (which I had drawn today, luckily by a nurse who didn't go through the bruise that's lingering on the top of my hand from Wednesday's bloodwork), I showed initial positive reactions to half of the vegetables tested. Amusingly, none of the foods that I've actually been avoiding (tomatoes, watermelons, and bananas) showed up as positive -- which according to my allergist the other day means that they're just oral cross-reactions to my grass/weed allergies, and so might clear up while I do the allergy shots.

However, these are the foods that came up positive:

Cereals: corn, oat, rice, and rye
Fruits: cantaloupe
Vegetables: string beans, garlic, lettuce, soybean, broccoli, squash, carrot, and potato (!?!)

So obviously the good news is that I don't have any signs of the scary allergies (shellfish, nuts, dairy, and egg products). But obviously the bad news is that cereals, garlic, soy, and potato comprise a significant portion of the more delicious aspects of my diet. But all of this needs to be confirmed and then discussed with the allergist before I know whether it's just a skin reaction or something potentially more serious, so I'm going to keep going as usual until that happens.

Anyway, I woke up this morning feeling better than I deserved but worse than I wanted; but that was to be expected since I only got four hours of sleep after drinking several glasses of wine, a mojito, half a martini, and a tequila shot. I dropped Geetika off at her apartment and made it down to Palo Alto for the allergy test in excellent time. Then, I met up with Sri for one last sandwich-based lunch; he's leaving for Providence, Rhode Island next week, and I will likely never see him again, so we had one last heart-to-heart (and by heart-to-heart, I mean I participated in my customary game of asking questions in an attempt to get him to divulge what's going on with him, while he expertly parried my questions and tried to turn the conversation back on me). I'm sad that I'll never see him again, since he's quite a winning fellow, but at least I was able to trap him into one last awkward hug as we said goodbye.

When I got back to Berkeley this afternoon, I slept for three hours, then engaged in some desultory internet-surfing and car-cleaning before taking a shower. Now I'm getting ready to go back to the evil city (which is why I'm blogging early tonight) -- several of us are going to play Rock Band at Vidya's apartment, and since it will be my apartment in a couple of days, this is an excellent opportunity to move my Wii and the Rock Band set to the other side of the bay. I'm planning on staying there tonight, although I definitely intend to stay far more sober than I did last night; I'm getting too old for these partying ways!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Rye allergy?
Does that mean you'll have to forego the elixir that is the sweet nectar known as Templeton Rye (g.t.)?

(g.t.) the new modern abreviation for "Google this", joining e.g. and i.e. in the pantheon of writing shorthand.