Keep walking, I'm breathing

[sovay]

I did not get sheep-dipped in Benadryl, but I am full of antihistamines and eating a pumpernickel bagel with chopped liver and a coconut-milk milkshake.

I have not become allergic to my cats. My long-time allergies to dust mites have worsened to the point where the mitigation strategies in which I already engage are not cutting it, so I have some further suggestions, an alteration to my medications, and we go from here. I also seem to have become allergic to pigweed, which I had never even heard of until I looked it up, at which point it turned out to be amaranth which I have both eaten and admired as an ornamental plant. I am decorated with surgical marker and punctures. I had been scratch-tested before, but never intradermally injected.

The fog at dawn was an astonishing suffusion of gold, glinting like rainbows around the Prudential. Afterward I took a couple of pictures from MGH and the Longfellow Bridge. I believe my plans for the afternoon involve a nap.

Comments

[pameladean]

Oh, those autumnal skies!

I am glad you aren't allergic to your cats. I did not know that amaranth is called pigweed too. I've eaten it just once, a lovely mess of greens at a now-defunct Greek restaurant. It was a special, and they never had it again -- it was too hard to get enough amaranth greens to offer even occasionally.

P.

[sovay]

Oh, those autumnal skies!

All the fog burned off and they were blue as space!

I am glad you aren't allergic to your cats.

I went immediately home and picked up Autolycus and put my face in his fur.

I did not know that amaranth is called pigweed too.

My father had been thinking about buying an ornamental one for the front yard and has very kindly scotched this plan. I never had Greek amaranth! That sounds really nice.

[pameladean]

Blue as space! A perfect thing.

I think putting your face in Autolycus's fur is a great celebratory move.

The Greek amaranth was amazing. I am not sure what all they put in it. I mean, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and I think some oregano were discernible, but there was a very unfamiliar complex of other flavors that could, I guess, simply have been the amaranth.

I noticed above a mention of amaranth in callaloo, and I've been lucky enough to have that when we had a Jamaican restaurant close by, but I think theirs was a mix of taro, okra, and spinach. Possibly they had trouble getting amaranth too.

P.

[sovay]

I think putting your face in Autolycus's fur is a great celebratory move.

He purred.

I noticed above a mention of amaranth in callaloo, and I've been lucky enough to have that when we had a Jamaican restaurant close by, but I think theirs was a mix of taro, okra, and spinach.

Hey, look, I would eat that, too.

[minoanmiss]

Most of the amaranth I've seen, in the northeastern US at least , has been grown in people's gardens. whenever I've found it in a farmer's market I treasure it.

Now I'm thinking about what greens mix would best substitute for it. I recently started cooking gai lan and I think that has to go in for similarly sized succulent stems.

[choco_frosh]

Every-fucking-thing is named pigweed. The Wikipedia disambiguation page lists three non-Amaranth genera, and I'm not sure it's comprehensive.
And normally when people say pigweed, I think Chenopodium.

[pameladean]

That's what I think of when I hear pigweed, too! I guess pigs... eat a lot of... weed?

P.

[sovay]

That's what I think of when I hear pigweed, too!

This is very confusing and I wish the test had come with scientific names.

[sovay]

Every-fucking-thing is named pigweed.

Oh, good Lord.

It can't have been Chenopodium album, because I was tested for lamb's quarters (it had a dot and shot of its own) and had no reaction. If other Chenopodium are called pigweed, shrug?

[choco_frosh]

No. if they say you're allergic to an Amaranthus, you're allergic to an Amaranthus.

[sovay]

if they say you're allergic to an Amaranthus, you're allergic to an Amaranthus.

The test said I'm allergic to pigweed. It used common rather than scientific names—for example, I know now that I am not allergic to English plantain, but this information means nothing about my relationship to bananas. (I have no reason to believe that I have any problem with bananas.) The internet said pigweed was amaranth. I need to find out what MGH actually shot into my arm!

I am also allergic to cockroaches, which I forgot to mention because the allergist thought it wasn't relevant to my problems and I'd heard of them.

[choco_frosh]

FFS.

[kore]

OMFG do I even want to know how you know you are allergic to cockroaches? That sounds like a horror movie!

Aha, looking at a couple of lab test pricing pages (like this one https://www.walkinlab.com/products/view/pigweed-rough-common-allergy-ige-blood-test), it looks like that may indeed be "Pigweed, rough (common)," which is Amaranthus retroflexus, a small plant from the Amaranth family, also called "redroot amaranthus." It looks kind of tall, very bristly, pale green. "However, there are many species of amaranth, and they cross-react allergenically," another site helpfully notes. "The genus also contains many weedy plants known as pigweed, especially rough pigweed (A. retroflexus), prostrate pigweed (A. graecizans), and white pigweed (A. albus)."

But it sounds like A. retroflexus might be the culprit? (Apologies if this is not helpful!)

[sovay]

OMFG do I even want to know how you know you are allergic to cockroaches? That sounds like a horror movie!

It came up in the test! I'd had no idea until then! It was about equivalent to the mite allergens, intriguingly, i.e. the welts came up like thunder out of China 'cross the bay. I can't tell if it's a new development or if I was just never exposed to the necessary threshold of allergen, because I remember petting a hissing cockroach at the Harvard science festival in 2018 and nothing bad happened.

But it sounds like A. retroflexus might be the culprit? (Apologies if this is not helpful!)

It's not unhelpful! It's just reinforcing my belief that when you are diagnosed with a new allergy, you should definitely get some binomial nomenclature with it.

[kore]

because I remember petting a hissing cockroach at the Harvard science festival in 2018 and nothing bad happened

//halfway up the curtains

I grew up in Santa Fe! We didn't have cockroaches!....centipedes yes, cockroaches no.

[minoanmiss]

Yay for doing some research! I was still at the stage of waving my arms and saying "but not providing scientific names is just UNSCIENTIFIC wtf"

[sovay]

"but not providing scientific names is just UNSCIENTIFIC wtf"

It is! I'm still going to call them!

[minoanmiss]

Sends you energy for the call

[kore]

They really totally should have specified, it sounds like what S is allergic to is Amaranthus retroflexus (Redroot pigweed). One ENT type site says "Lamb’s Quarters (Chenopodium album) is occasionally also called Pigweed or Smooth Pigweed but does not belong to the Amaranthaceae family....Common Pigweed is also often confused with other Pigweed species. The Pigweed family contains many genera and over 500 species, including Common Pigweed, Powell Amaranth, Prostrate Pigweed, and Tumble Pigweed, the most common of these being Common Pigweed." !

So yeah "pigweed" was NOT helpful.

[mrissa]

Oh thank you, I was confused.