EDB

It was 1983 and one summer day, I became violently ill for no apparent reason.  Only I was not alone, 104 others all crowded the local emergency room all with the same symptoms.  CDC was notified, as was the WHO, that sometime was very wrong in our little town.  In the end, it was found that all of us had eaten poisoned watermelons.  A chemical, EDB, had been sprayed on them to kill bugs - it darn near killed the lot of us instead.

It is now a year later, I had moved, bought a house, set up life as a telecommuter and was in great shape.  And it happened again.  Only this time there was no watermelon and it was so bad that I was on life support.  The police were called and poor Gaelic Girl was really grilled by them but she was completely clueless as to what on earth had happened to me.  The police suspected someone was trying to kill me and had used some form of poison, so they suggested I re-enact that day's party, invite the same guests and see what happens.

OMG!  I had to call GG to come get me at home that evening and drag my dead body back to ER!  Now the police were very happy!  Someone at the party was trying to kill me.  Really?  Actually, it was all my closest friends, any one of whom I would let kill me - if I had it coming.  So, I was a little unhappy here ..... I could think of nothing that anyone would want to kill me for!

So, round three, different guests, same results.  The police went through everything analyzing food items and residues - in the end, they had nothing either.

At this point Swedish Rocket Scientist, mused out loud, that maybe it was a food allergy.  So, I went in for the whole course - hundreds of needles and scratches covered my body and yes, I was allergic to citrus, corn, egg whites, dairy and chocolate.  The essence of life stripped from me.

Now, EDB is a water based chemical.  Unfortunately, once in your system, it is always there, stored in your fat tissue.  So, since I was being hospitalized annually for some slight amount of the above unwittingly nailing me, I theorized that if I gained weight, then I could lessen the concentration of EDB in my system.  And it worked.  Double my weight and no more problems for 17 years now.

Only, I want to lose weight now and have dropped over 40 pounds.  And I was whacked last night in a rude reminder of my problem - which I had actually forgotten about.  Well, I am going to be dropping this poundage and I guess if it is back on to the strict diet, so be it.  But, I will need to contact my allergist this week and find out what it was they gave me - it would stop an attack dead in its tracks, also turned me into a zombie for a few hours but never the less it works.

As a side note, a researcher hunted down all 105 of us and found that we all had exactly the same food allergies!  This then led to a school of study of searching for environmental problems based upon the allergies people in those localities developed.  Kind of cool.

Well, need tea to get the day started.