Okay, I actually doubt anyone has noticed this but I’m gonna talk about it anyway. Also, just gonna throw this disclaimer in here that I am not a medical expert and I’m talking about stuff that worked for me. This is not advice and you should talk to your doctor before you try any of the stuff that worked for me.
From 2013 to 2015, I had chronic ear infections and canker sores. I had seven ear infections in 2015 alone. Six in my left ear, one in my right. I would have as many as twenty canker sores at a time. Let me tell you how not fun it was trying to stand on a boat and talk with these things. I would finish my fourteen-hour shift, go home, and make half a box of mac and cheese for dinner. (I only made half a box because even at a dollar a box I couldn’t afford to eat a whole box for dinner most nights.) I practically lived off the stuff. I know most people talk about starving college students and ramen, but I never liked ramen. Mac and cheese was my go to.
Around Christmas 2015, I was home in Tennessee and I went for a checkup while I was there. I talked to my doctor about the continued ear problems and canker sores and how frustrated I was. (We’d been trying different things but in his defense it’s hard to treat someone you see at most twice a year.) He suggested testing to see if I was allergic to dairy. Apparently dairy allergy is a major cause of ear infections. I thought it couldn’t be possible because I’d been eating dairy my whole life and had only had problems for a few years. But it’s possible you can become allergic to something or grow into an allergy.
Well, since it was the holidays, I was back in Florida by the time I got the results. Sure enough, I had grown into a dairy allergy. No more mac and cheese for me.
This was a hard switch. I remember going grocery shopping the first time and it was pretty much checking the ingredients on things and swearing. I was so relieved when I found out Oreos are dairy free. They were basically the only chocolate I could have. I was trying different kinds of milk and my roommate decided to try them with me so I wouldn’t feel so alone. I remember her yelling at the container of oat milk, “WHAT ARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU CALL YOURSELF MILK!?” It turned out that chocolate almond milk was my best bet, because nothing tasted like milk but it at least tasted like chocolate milk.
I’m happy to report Dole Whip is dairy free. Disney has a couple over non-dairy ice cream options floating around that were pretty good too. Beaches and Cream even figured out a dairy free milkshake a couple years ago. Universal laughed at me when I asked if they had any non-dairy ice cream.
Mom and I were doing research and ran across a statistic that only something like 15% of people with dairy allergies are still allergic to it after it’s been baked. That some dairy allergies were actually casein allergies, which is a protein in dairy, and the baking process chemically alters the protein so it’s no longer an allergen.
So, for the first time ever I found a doctor in Florida because I needed to talk to someone about this. I didn’t know how to find out if I was in that 15% or not. Let’s just say she was awful and I did not go back. Her answer to basically everything was, “I can’t help you with that”, “I have no way of knowing”, and “Your insurance won’t cover that”. (How do you know my insurance won’t without checking with my insurance?) She also refused to give me a referral to a different gynecologist than the one they partner with because I wasn’t comfortable with seeing a man for that. Well, my insurance wouldn’t let me go without a referral, you see the problem. Useless.
I had to wait to be back in Tennessee to see my doctor again to get some answers. He also couldn’t tell me if I was in the 15%, but since we knew my allergy wasn’t going to kill me, we could find out. He told me to test it, one thing at a time, and document what happens. So, I started researching food diaries. Then I got into bullet journaling and it was perfect.
I spent the next six months charting everything I ate and every symptom. Eventually I got it worked out. Baked things were fine, and even some not baked things would be okay in small doses. The best analogy I can make is I can eat the cake because it’s baked, but I can’t eat the frosting on it. I used this analogy for years explaining this to people. Stuff like ranch dressing was okay if I didn’t eat a lot of it or have it more than every couple of days. Ice cream was okay every few weeks in small amounts. The absolute worst thing I could eat was cheese. I eventually even stopped telling waiters I had an allergy because after a while I could figure out what was Chelsea friendly better than they could. (This took months of going to places with allergy menus that I studied.)
Life went on. The occasional dairy exposure was worth a handful of canker sores every now and then. I did seriously miscalculate at Food and Wine one year and I wound up having a terrible ear infection on Jay’s birthday. I had a sneezing fit after eating a Goldfish cracker. That was a new one. There was medicine I could take to clear up the canker sores quickly if it was really bad, but it came with a fun side effect of mood swings so I tried not to use that too often.
Blaze opened up and I could finally eat pizza again, although everyone always thought I was crazy when I ordered vegan cheese then put meatballs on it. I also had to argue with them because apparently their meatballs have cheese in them, but no one told me that until after I’d eaten there like four times. I never had a reaction so I just kept getting them, but then I had to argue with them every time. (I did tell Blaze about the allergy because I asked for a glove change every time since they suggested it when I first went.)
I had decided for the wedding I would eat what I wanted in small doses and deal with the consequences. I wasn’t going to miss out on the fun cruise food options.
Something strange happened. I didn’t have a major reaction, or really even a minor one. However, I was so distracted by the fact that I was getting married and everything happening that I honestly didn’t think about this for months after the fact.
In October 2020, Jay really wanted pizza and I said okay if he ordered my favorite brand because I wanted a piece. Like I said, cheese is the worst thing I can eat, but I had a craving and was really frustrated with work and I just wanted real pizza.
No reaction. At all. I repeated the experiment and ordered pizza again a couple weeks later. Again, no reaction.
Huh.
So, I started a new bullet journal and I started charting again. Then I found a new doctor down here so I could get a new allergy test. (The new doctor is great but it took me four visits over a month to actually get the allergy test.)
Tested negative for dairy. Tested positive for sheep. No petting zoos for me I guess? Like I grew into it, I grew out of it.
I have had pizza many times since then. I have gone back to eating mac and cheese. I drove straight to the store to buy some after getting the test. I actually ate a whole box while writing this. I’ve had Mayfield ice cream again. (If you’ve never had Mayfield, I highly recommend it. Bright yellow containers. It’s made about forty minutes outside my home town and I think it’s the best ice cream in the world.) I had no idea how much I missed real sour cream until I had it again. I had a Mountain Melt for the first time in years.
It doesn’t sound like it, but I have taken it slow. I’ve tried to introduce only one new thing a week. I haven’t gone back to putting cheese on burgers or sandwiches because I’m kind of used to eating it without them, and cheese that isn’t melted doesn’t sound that appetizing anymore. I also haven’t tried real milk, and I don’t know if I ever will because it kind of scares me. It’s the one thing I never tested, and I haven’t had a drink of real milk since 2016. So far, I’ve only had it in mac and cheese.
So, Chelsea, why are you talking about this on your blog?
Well, I like to write and I felt like writing this. I’m also hoping that my struggles with this over the last five years might help someone who’s trying to sort out their own allergies. Again, I am not a medical expert and you should always talk to your doctor, but I would have never started a food diary without being told to. It would have helped me immensely if I’d known to start it when we first found out about the allergy.
I realize how lucky I am that my allergy was mild enough that I could play trial and error with it, and that, as far as I know, I don’t have a deadly allergy to anything. (Certain food coloring does cause hives though. I’m allergic to the Gray Stuff at Be Our Guest. It’s very sad.) I’m even luckier that I’ve grown out of it.
The whole reason I write this blog is to help people. So, this article may not be super on theme for life in Orlando, but I’ve been branching out anyway. Having a dairy allergy has been a large part of my life for the last five years, and I live in Orlando, so there. If there’s anyone this article helped point in the right direction on figuring out their own allergies, it’s done its job. And if it didn’t, hey I tried.
