Crying Over Cheese

Author's Note:

As the title might suggest, there was crying and it may have involved cheese but this is one of those situations where the cheese stands for a larger issue that will be explained.

Anyways, on to the problem at hand.

I cannot remember a time where I didn't live in fear of my allergies. It's the same way with my eyesight: I cannot remember a day where someone could hold up their hand a foot in front of my face and I could clearly see every freckle and crease and easily count the number of fingers they held up to test my limits.
I know that as a very young child, my doctor discovered a life-theatening aversion to penicillin (and every other drug that happens to end in -cillin) when my entire body turned into one giant, swollen, hive.
I also know that my favorite snack as a child was raw carrots, until one day I ballooned up and they were snatched away from my swollen fingers before I could blink. I can't actually remember what carrots taste like now.

From then on, discovering my allergies was a game of give and take. Was it just the skin of peaches or the entire fruit? Is it about the region that the apples are grown in? How will organic tomatoes affect your throat?
Basically, I ate fruit and vegetables on a wing and a prayer and a constant supply of Benadryl tablets on hand.
During the first week of moving to Chicago, I ate an apple that made my mouth hurt and my hands swell. Panicking and alone in my apartment, I took medicine and went to bed, praying that that would solve the issue.

As I have grown up and my palette has refined, my life has become very food-centric. I love trying new foods, which gives my mother (and to some extent, myself), much anxiety. I had hoped that I might grow out of the allergies but it seems that I keep discovering more of them as time passes.

This brings us to cheese. I have a certain fondness for strong, French cheeses. They smell awful but spread them on bread and hand me an apple and I am a happy girl.
It seems that with foods, instead of building up a tolerance, I build up gradual allergies. I ate blue cheese on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and family dinner last week before breaking out into hives on my wrists and scalp.

My mother decided to do some research into the reaction. For those of you who don't know what Penicillin is extracted from, it's basically mold bacteria. Do you know what else has mold bacteria in it? Blue cheese, along with other strong cheeses like Brie (my personal favorite) and Camembert.
Thus ends my lengthy career of eating really good, smelly cheese.

I should also really get an EpiPen now which makes me panic because needles freak me out more than almost anything (except snakes).
Hence, the crying over cheese but not really just cheese. More like crying over cheese and limitations and needles and living in fear over what I put in my mouth and how it might kill me.