Hold the coconut, please!

To help you understand this story, I have to rewind back several decades...



When I was a child I loathed anything that contained coconut. It didn't matter what type of yummy dessert it was, if it contained coconut, I would gag uncontrollably with every taste. So, I just avoided it. This never seemed to bother my mom, especially since I was usually skipping the sweets. I just couldn't stand coconut!



Fast forward to the summer of 2003. I was on my lunch break from the dentist's office eating at a Chinese buffet. We were in a hurry, so I just piled some food on my plate, trying not to think of the ally cats that were probably stewing on the buffet table. After I had been back at work for a little bit, my mouth started itching and my lips got warm. One of the dentists asked what was wrong with my mouth, so I immediately ran to the bathroom to see what was wrong. Just imagine this...a little kid's lips who constantly licks and licks and leaves that yucky red ring around them...yep, that was me. I splashed some water on my mouth and went back to work, albeit a tad bit self-conscious about my face. It couldn't have been 30 minutes after that and my lips started tingling. Again, I returned to the bathroom, fearing what I'd see. Well, the sight definitely wasn't pleasant...my lips were swelling! Dr. Moore told me it was probably an allergic reaction to something, and threatened that if I didn't take a full dose of Benadryl, then he'd give me a shot of it. I'm so sensitive to medication, I knew that if I took even ONE Benadryl, I'd need a nap. Cautiously, I swallowed the pills and continued work...only to find myself dozing off in a patient's mouth during an extraction (no kidding). Oh my! Good thing that was only a summer job...



Fast forward again to 2004. I made a trip to Florida to see my sister. We decided to eat at Joe's Crab Shack as our final meal before heading out later that evening, and I ordered a huge platter of Coconut Shrimp. Even though I'm not a coconut fan, it sounded absolutely fantastic, and it was! I devoured it without thinking twice about it. So, we finished eating and hit the road-- Mississippi bound for a race the next morning. Before we even made it across the Florida border, I got that funny feeling again. Hello, mouth swelling! We swerved into a Publix and I once again tanked up on Benadryl so I wouldn't look like Jennifer Lopez after she consumed nuts in Monster in Law. I was hoping the effects of the medicine would wear off before the race...WRONG. I was so sluggish it wasn't even funny, at one point during the race I worried I was going to doze off and plummet out of the kayak into the murky Wolf River never to be seen again...never fear, my partner yelled at me and snapped me back into reality and I dragged myself through the rest of the race.

Later that same year, I had to go to a conference with my principal and two other teachers from school. After the last run-in with coconut, I was back to intentionally avoiding it. We went to eat dinner, and I ordered a Golden Crusted Tilapia. Nowhere on the menu did it say the golden crust contained coconut, but when it arrived, it was smothered in the stuff. I have to admit, I was a little bit disappointed when I saw this. I was on a very limited budget and couldn't afford to order anything else, so being the crafty person I am...I simply scraped the golden crust off my tilapia. I obviously shouldn't have eaten the fish because before we even got back to our hotel my mouth started burning! We had to make a pit stop at a Harps in the ghetto to once again purchase some Benadryl for my ever swelling lips.

Through several other encounters with coconut over the next couple of years, I found I didn't just dislike it, I was allergic to it!


Fast forward again to the present. I'm just curious...has your scalp ever itched so badly it was all you could do to will your fingers from pulverizing your head until the itch was gone? Well, embarrassingly enough, mine has been that way all month! I was seriously considering sneaking into WalMart and purchasing some Scalpicin. OK, on with the story... Earlier this month I decided I'd try out a new shampoo, don't know why I did this...I was just tired of the way the stuff I've used for the past 2 years smelled. I noticed shortly after I started using it, my head felt a little tingly. I just chalked it up to the arctic conditions we've been experiencing lately and didn't give much more thought to it...until I started to notice the itch every time I sat down at my desk. Being the germ-a-phobe that I am, I immediately became obsessed with the thought that I might have caught head lice from my sweet little kiddies at school. Never fear, after closely inspecting my head in various types of lighting from several different angles, I determined I was indeed louse-free, but the itch was still there. I became a closet head-scratcher. I found myself scratching every time I thought someone wasn't looking...I scratched so much earlier this week that I thought I saw some of my scalp scratching off. I had scratched so much I gave myself dandruff!! So, today I got the grand idea that I would leave conditioner on my hair for an extra long time and moisturize that gross dandruff away. And I did just that, until my scalp started burning horribly. Right away all kinds of bizarre worries shot through my head, and I fully expected to see large chunks of my hair falling out as I furiously rinsed the conditioner. As I was turning off the shower to get out, I happened to glimpse at my new shampoo and conditioner, and this is what I saw on the bottle: 'A fusion of orchid and coconut milk'. A rush of relief flooded over my burning scalp as I read those words...I don't have a horrible scalp disease! I'm not going to have to wash with Head and Shoulders for the rest of my life or take out stock in Scalpicin! It's just the coconut! It turns out my skin is allergic to it too. Whew. I'm chunking that shampoo.