My Alpha-Gal Story

Ever since I can remember, I have had seemingly random allergic reactions. Nobody was really quite sure what I was allergic to but it always seemed to happen after a cookout 🧐. Eventually, we decided that I was allergic to a certain brand of hotdogs and to honeysuckle. So for years, I avoided that brand of hotdogs and honeysuckle (which I can’t wait to try again now that I know that’s not the culprit!) until the summer of 2022. We had spent the summer traveling around Colorado in our camper trailer and stopped off in Fort Collins to visit family. I had an allergic reaction to the barbeque that I had had for lunch (around four hours after, of course!) and went through the panic of trying to find an emergency room in a new town. Benadryl ended up taking care of the reaction, but we decided to get allergy testing done to determine what specifically I was allergic to.

That fall was when I was diagnosed with Alpha-Gal Syndrome. At first, all it seemed to entail were minor diet changes: no pork, beef, or lamb. As my mom began to research more, however, it turned into much more drastic lifestyle changes: no dairy, red meat, gelatin, other mammal products, or agar (and you’d be surprised how many things agar is in!). After completely cleaning out our fridge and pantry and figuring out what restaurants I could eat at, we decided to get the rest of the family tested. Turns out my mom has it, (flashback to disastrous reactions after eating charcuterie boards), and so does my sister, although she does not seem to be reactive.