Living the Food-Allergic Life

If you had an allergy so severe that accidentally eating a forbidden food could kill you in minutes--as you gasp for breath, your throat and tongue swell shut, your blood pressure drops and organs fail--how would it change your life, and your relationship to food? For people with food-induced anaphylaxis, the severest form of allergic response, simply eating in restaurants, accepting invitations to dinner, going on overnight field trips, or traveling through foreign countries means facing one's mortality with every meal. In this book, Mark S. Ferrara weaves history, science, and psychology to recount the story of his struggles with allergic asthma and a life-threatening allergy to nuts--and his difficulties living and working in the Far East and Near East--to show how the quest for self-actualization can lead to an acceptance of transience that borders on the mystical. Along the way, he guides parents in keeping food-allergic children safe at home and at school and offers strategies that adolescents and adults may use to negotiate social spaces involving food. He explains how survivors of anaphylaxis can cope with the sometimes-irrational fears of food that follow that traumatic experience, so they may live happy, healthy, meaningful lives.