Off to the allergist for tests!

A month and a half ago (sorry!) I began writing the story of my introduction to the world of allergies and eventually to anaphylaxis. Ana-what? When I ended last month's chapter, I wrote about how I went home to bed after a lunch with co-workers, not really knowing what was going on.

Two or three hours later my parents arrived at the house. I got up and asked them if I looked different than I normally did. The answer was a resounding yes and I was immediately transported to a local walk-in clinic for a brief examination. The physician quickly assessed the situation and informed me that I was suffering from an allergic reaction to food I had eaten earlier in the day. I was given Benadryl and was told to take it for a week and I'd be good as new. Given the relative severity of the reaction, I was advised that allergy testing might be a good place to start preventing another such episode.

Years before, I was tested for airborne allergens that were likely contributing to hayfever symptoms. My mother had undergone years of shots to cope with her allergies to ragweed and other wonderful noxious weeds, and it was my turn to suffer from the same thing. But for over a decade, that was the full extent of my intolerance for environmental allergens.

Back I went to the allergist. Results indicated that I had to avoid shellfish. Had I consumed shellfish that afternoon that caused me to break out into hives and have difficulty breathing? No.

As an aside, I rarely stray too deep into menus at restaurants. Depending on what kind of establishment I'm frequenting on a given day, I'm very likely to order some salmon dish (accompanied by rice and vegetables) or a club sandwich. 90% of the time you should be able to predict my order hours before I place it. I consequently have never had any issues eating out and this was the first time.

After the test results were in, my doctor suggested that I was the victim of cross-contamination (or something like that) where a pan, knife or some other tool had been used to cook a lobster or shrimp prior to grilling/frying my salmon. Satisfied that I knew how to prevent further occurances, off I went, figuring that I was unlucky and sound kitchen cooking policies will prevent something like this from recurring.

Would that turn out to be the case?