Her Allergy is Real
I had a repeat patient as a medic who would always call for a severe allergic reaction to shellfish every other month or so. She always had an allergy and I knew her reactions were getting worse.
After a year of this silliness, my crew and I stayed in the hospital ER with her and talked at length about the situation. Beforehand, she’d always stay mum about how it kept happening.
But she finally told me the truth and what she told me made my jaw drop. She told us that she comes from a patriarchal culture and her father always made this amazing seafood soup.
If she didn’t eat it and “force her body not to reject his gift to the family,” she would lose her car, phone, or whatever punishment her father deemed necessary.
We pleaded with her to do whatever it took to show him it was deadly and to also carry her Epi-Pens with her.
Fast forward a few years later when I went into nursing and joined that ER. There she was, back at the hospital with a bloated face. Turns out, she had gone off to college in another state and hadn’t been home for a while, so she visited her folks for a holiday.
Of course, she had the soup…Despite hitting herself with the Epi-Pen when her throat started tightening, the reaction continued. Her mom, who I had never seen before, told me she tried to eat it fast and rushed to the bathroom, where she was found on the floor.
The medics couldn’t tube her in the field, so they tried medical management until they could drive her to our ER. The doctor performed a tracheotomy at the bedside and she went to the ICU.
It took a week for her to recover and I was told by the ICU nurses that her father “finally got it” that her allergy was a real medical condition. MonsterHunterRelias