Author: AndreaVPhoto

I’ve been meaning to write this all out for awhile…

What happened?

For a span of 7 months my body malfunctioned and spiraled out of control. I was less than 100 lbs and terrified of ingesting most anything due to allergic type reactions. The ER and Drs said to keep taking Benadryl which surprise was part of the problem. I saw 20 doctors in this span of time before getting on a road to recovery.

I had been taking a new medication for a few months and I was extremely stressed out in my life which started some weird things to happen in my body. Not a big deal just weird, until I stared shaking uncontrollably (that turned out to be from Benadryl). I had a full body freak out/panic attack and after that I quit taking the medication I suspected of being part of the problem, assuming I’d get professional medical help after that. Nope. Most of the doctors made it worse. I saw as many doctors as I could hoping the next one would help. It just kept getting worse. At one point I felt better and my body was tolerating some more foods, but I took a supplement from the current dr I was seeing and that made me crash and burn. I was back to being able to eat only 2-3 foods reaction free and I was furious. Before taking that supplement (iodine) vitamin C was helping a lot ( I even had some IV therapies with vitamin C and felt very good) but after that when I tried to take the vitamin C I’d break out in burning rashes. I took lots of photos of the physical reactions because I felt crazy and couldn’t believe this was happening.

Lots of other traumatic poop happened that I don’t care to wrote about…

Dr. #20 figured out I had SSRI withdrawal syndrome from stopping the medication cold turkey. He put me on another SSRI that we knew I could tolerate to counter act the withdrawal syndrome. SSRI withdrawal syndrome can cause histamine intolerance symptoms- hence all the shitty allergic type reactions. I was seeing another Dr. as well Dr #20 and she got me into an eating disorder hospital to relearn how to eat without being terrified and get nourished. I developed ARFID due to the trauma associated with ingesting food, vitamins etc and having traumatic reactions. So in the facility as the reactions lessened I got 3 months of exposure-therapy to food. Pretty interesting and now funny, fantastic experience. I did 1 month of virtual outpatient therapy after being discharged from the hospital and continue to work with a dietician.

I can happily say I have 95% less fear and 1-2 reactions linger and pop up once in awhile and I know now they are not to be concerned with and try my best to ignore them.

I am fully and beyond weight restored. My body is still adjusting.

I learned a lot, met amazing amazing people and am grateful for where I ended up. It was truly a place of healing.

All food is fuel 💖 Balance 💖 self love