Thread by @CornAllergyGirl

This write-up references "that harrowing article in the Atlantic" about corn allergy. If reading that was harrowing, my actual life would cause you to fall over dead.

splinternews.com/the-corn-peopl…

No disrespect to the author of the Atlantic article- nothing as short as a magazine article could possibly cover everything we deal with.

But it didn't really go into airborne reactivity, which is affects every aspect of daily life, and isn't as uncommon as you might think among people with corn allergy.

Imagine other peoples' seemingly innocuous choices having the potential to be literally life-threatening.

Imagine trying to book a flight and checking the in-flight menus, hoping that they're accurate, and trying to discern whether the dangerous products served could be pulled from service without causing a fuss among the other passengers or not.

Imagine trying to work in an office and trying to figure out how many cube-rows of people you need to email and ask to not eat fritos, cheetos, sun chips, or doritos with their sandwiches. Imagine being subjected to severe reactions when someone forgets.

Imagine not having been able to safely see a movie in the theater in years, or decades, or ever in your entire life. After a while you stop caring about spoilers and just assume you will know all the complaints and gossip about every new release long before you get to see it.

Imagine having to wear a mask when you drive in certain areas because the ethanol in gas fumes makes your tongue swell up or causes you to have severe asthma. Imagine the mask not being enough in heavy traffic and having to just avoid certain places at certain times of day.

Imagine not being able to attend a gathering, social or professional, unless the hosts are willing to not serve a food that is so common people can't even wrap their minds around avoiding it. Imagine being resented by your friends and coworkers for being difficult to accommodate.

Or maybe you don't have to imagine it, because you already live like this, either due to a corn allergy or another severe airborne sensitivity.

The atlantic article also didn't really go in-depth about exactly how hard it is to avoid corn in medications and medical supplies.

Corn is so ubiquitous in medicine that in emergency situations it can be literally impossible to avoid, and the best you can do is just take antihistamines and steroids and hope for the best.

One in-depth account of me having to do that is here.
cornallergygirl.com/2017/11/25/hem…

Not only that, but before you can even negotiate safe treatment, you have to convince the doctors that it's even possible to react to the things that you react to.

We are frequently told by doctors that IV dextrose is safe because "the protein is processed out," many brands of dextrose solution having warnings right on the package insert that they are not appropriate for corn allergy. And that's just one example.

Even outside of emergency situations, negotiating corn-free medication takes specialized knowledge and research. We can't trust a pharmacist to know what inactive ingredients are from corn, so we have to check ourselves.

cornallergygirl.com/2013/03/26/fin…

In many cases, we have to get our meds specially made to be free of corn and other allergens.

Finding a compounding pharmacy and trying--and frequently failing--to get insurance to cover your compounded meds is an unfortunate rite of passage for us.
cornallergygirl.com/2013/10/31/ask…

If you are airborne reactive to corn, hospitals are full of triggers. Hand sanitizers, floor cleaners, scented laundry detergent used by staff members, and then of course the actual food served. There's no way to survive without constant antihistamines and a respirator.

I could keep going, but there's really no good stopping place.

I'll stop with this:

Bud Light may not be brewed with corn syrup, but it is most definitely NOT corn free.

If you believe that anything at all is completely corn free you haven't been reading. 😂