The first of my allergy blood test results arrive and there it is - mould, locust, dust mite, cockroach, cricket, mealworm, prawns. Apart from mould and dust mite, the others I'd been exposed to my whole life without noticing. Another variable I'd never considered, another piece clicking into place. I'm still waiting for the specific yeast and wheat results, the ones that no doubt will confirm what my body has been screaming at me for years. Or maybe all along its been something else.

The revelations have been coming fast these last few weeks, each one reshaping the landscape of what I thought I knew. I've been doing this alone - all my adult life - researching, connecting dots, piecing together a medical mystery that spans nearly 40 years while everyone else stood by. Like the Little Red Hen, I planted the wheat, I harvested it, I milled it, and now I've finally baked the cake and iced it and it looks pretty good. Only, I can't eat it either. Where the Hen denied the others, my body - trying to protect me - won't allow it. It is poison in my heightened immune state.

My IgE levels to mite antigens, mould proteins, and system-wide allergic baseline are so elevated that even trace proteins from storage mites present in wheat dust during harvesting and handling survive processing and trigger severe reactions that most people would never register. Also, mould can develop on grain during growth or in storage, which is why some wheat triggers me and some doesn't. After multiple sensitisation events to yeast and wheat, my body's reaction has become unpredictably and ridiculously sensitive.

There is a strange paradox to it. I have put together all the ingredients to create the cake - something used for celebration, a symbol of abundance - turning what is ordinarily desirable into something that is potentially toxic to me. While the Hen's reward was consumption, mine is its rejection in favour of the wisdom I have acquired by piecing together the recipe. This deep understanding is my own nourishment that gives me a renewed chance to hopefully celebrate and live a fuller, less reactive life. I need more less.

Everything started unravelling in October 2023. For my whole life my worst month for allergies and asthma had been November but recently it has started in October. My allergies are hitting earlier now, the season stretching and warping, grass pollens appearing weeks before they once did. Add to that October 21st, the anniversary of my father's death and also a looming Real Estate inspection - that familiar invasion of my space, judgement hanging in the air by people who really are in no position to judge. Pretty much the right ingredients for a bender. A pattern I had developed and refined over the years – maladaptive coping, self-destructive behaviours, ways of punishing myself that included consuming the things I knew would hurt me. So I drank a lot of beer, more than I'd had in ages, a double whammy of wheat and yeast assaulting my system. I topped it off with honey prawns from the neighbouring Chinese takeaway, a further insult. My gut tore itself apart.

What followed was four days of agony that I thought was food poisoning/too much booze - but I was recovering - slowly. I was well enough by the Monday morning to handle the real estate inspection. Then some Inner Health Plus Travel capsules arrived after lunch (recommended by the chemist for what I had explained to him as food poisoning). I'd taken the regular formulation a few times before without issue so thought these ones would be ok. By 4 PM the cramps returned, even more vicious and unrelenting. The worst pain I have ever experienced. I held out for 24 hours - Medical PTSD from past hospital trauma is the reason I have to be nearly dead before I'll admit myself to a hospital – but by Tuesday afternoon I couldn't anymore. I called an ambulance, was put in isolation in Emergency, lots of very messy stool samples - "I'd double bag that if I was you" one of the nurses said to her sidekick - a few scans and a colitis diagnosis. Six hours of treatment, then home. I didn't figure out until a few days after I got out of hospital the Travel variety was a different type of probiotic - 100% yeast. My tank was literally empty.