Thank God, I'm Not Allergic to Flowers

The tests are in, and my diet just got a whole lot more complicated. But I can still play with flowers to my heart’s content. Plus: Two flower book recs.

Dad will have chicken tortilla soup waiting for us, he says. A new recipe he’s excited about. He is so sweet.

We have a 7 a.m. boat, so we should get to him by 5 o’clock.

He wanted to know if the ingredients in the soup would be okay for me to eat. He knows I’ve gotten the results of my blood tests for food allergies, and that I now have a list of foods to avoid, with celery at the top of it.

Yes, I am more allergic to celery than any other food, according to the levels of celery IgE (immunoglobulin antibodies, which are released by the body in response to allergens) in my blood.

It turns out that my visit to the ER last month was indeed a perfect storm. Prepping all that celery root, rubbing the juice of celery root in my eye, eating some of the stir-fried celery root and peanuts (peanuts being cross-reactive with celery and also showing up in my blood tests as a low-level allergen), and then going for a walk (which can worsen an allergic reaction) was just the right combination for trouble.

But celery isn’t the only problem.