Hey friends! So I realized that I never updated you on my allergic reaction issues I was having so I'll be sharing that story with you in a minute, but first I wanted to show you what affordable outfit I loved so much that I ordered it in a second color. This under $20 Amazon find is so comfortable and easy to wear that I picked it up in green too! The neck can be worn several different ways. I styled the black off both shoulders and this green one off one shoulder, but it can also be worn a little higher to cover both shoulders so it's truly versatile for whatever occasion you might want to wear it. I think it's the perfect Saturday morning farmers market and running errands look, but it can also be paired with heels for a more dressed up style. And you can't beat that price!
Did I mention that is has pockets?
It is true to size. I ordered a small in both colors
So back to my allergic reactions. A little over a week ago I shared a picture where I mention in the caption that what we see on Instagram isn't the whole story and that 30 minutes after this photo where I looked happy and carefree I ended up having my third severe allergic reaction in five days. I woke up the Monday of that week suddenly allergic to something I had been having nearly every day for years. I hadn't introduced any new products to my regimen or eaten anything that I don't normally eat so it wasn't that difficult to narrow down the cause after my second negative reaction on Tuesday. Or so I thought.
Let's back up a little bit to Sunday. It was a regular morning that I spent at my sister's house for breakfast and coffee. We headed over to my mom's house to do some work on one of the houses that she rents out that is currently vacant, and again, everything was normal. After I left there my mouth felt so dry. Incredibly dry. This happens to me from time to time during allergy season, but this day was a little worse. After chewing some gum my saliva started finally getting back to normal and that was it. I didn't experience anything else.
Monday morning I was having my coffee and just taking my morning breather. This is easily my favorite time of the morning. All of a sudden my arm started to itch. And then my face. My stomach. The itch was everywhere. When I got up and looked in the mirror I looked like a monster. I had hives in giant red blotches from head to toe. I had never experienced anything like this before. After several hours, a couple Benadryl pills and a bunch of allergy cream the hives were pretty much gone, but I felt awful and slept most of the day. I chalked it up to the dust from the work we had done on the house. I do have sensitive skin and since that's around the time my dry mouth started I just assumed I was having a reaction to something my skin came in contact with- albeit very belated reaction, but at the time this made sense to me.
Tuesday morning I was feeling a lot better and thought I was in the clear. I was having my morning coffee when, you guessed it, the same exact thing happened. This one was a little more intense with larger hives and a deeper red color. I joked that I must be allergic to mornings like one of my favorite and most worn tees says. It was then that it hit me: COFFEE. I was suddenly allergic to coffee? I had heard of intolerances starting overnight, but a full blown allergy from one day to the next? It wasn't a new batch of coffee as I used K-Cups and I was already at the bottom of that box of the same Starbucks Sumatra that I have been drinking for nearly a year. The almond milk I used was not a brand new carton and had only been open a couple days. And the sugar I used was the same batch I had been using for a couple weeks. The only answer was coffee. I was devastated. I love coffee. Dairy had already been taken away from me and now coffee?!
The next few days I felt awful and flu like and had a couple other side effects from the allergic reactions, but then by Friday I felt fine again. I hadn't had coffee since Tuesday and was having a caffeine craving so we went to grab a soda. I joked after picking up my Coke that it would be so funny if I ended up suddenly itching and it wasn't the coffee itself, but the caffeine I was allergic to. That would be the soft drink cup in the Instagram photo I talked about earlier. I can hardly stand to look at that picture now. That delicious Coke did me dirty. It wasn't funny like I joked. We were in the drive-thru at what is usually a magical place: In N Out. This time wasn't so magical. While in the long line to grab our food I started to itch. Stuck in this drive thru with cars in front of us and cars behind us and no way out is where my third allergic reaction in five days happened. By the time we made it home 30 minutes later I looked absolutely terrifying. This was the worst of the reactions and enough to made me completely terrified of caffeine.
So now that's where we're at. I'm told it might me temporary and a lot of extra info that gives me a little bit of hope. So many of my favorite drinks have caffeine. It seems like such a little thing, but this isn't the first food that I love that has been taken from me. Having to give up dairy as a cheese lover was hard enough. Now not being able to have caffeine is torture. It's so strange how our bodies work and how something we've loved and enjoyed for years suddenly starts to wreak havoc on our bodies. But for now I'm struggling a little extra every morning and a little bit more gloomy so tomorrow when you're having your morning coffee please enjoy an extra cup for me.
