Dubai: The first time Uzma Haroon had a severe food allergy attack everything went black, she could not see, her mouth and the inside of her eyes suddenly filled with boils, pustules formed on her face and then she fainted.
Her husband panicked, thinking she was dying, and dragged her to the lift to get her to hospital, while also carrying their two small children.
When the Pakistani housewife came to her senses she found herself in a hospital bed. "I had never fainted in my life before," she said.
"I am afraid to be alone in the house now. I have two children. What will happen to them if I faint again?" she said.
Doctors found that her allergy is triggered by foods including red meat, almonds, bananas, sesame seeds, peanuts and seafood.
"In the winter season I would eat roasted peanuts and nothing would happen," Uzma said, noting her allergies started after marriage. "I loved to eat bananas."
The next attack came six months later, but she is not sure what caused it. "Maybe it was a baby cough syrup I had taken when I my throat was bad," she said. Her allergy attacks also come when she takes a particular painkiller.
She has given up eating beef and fish. "We mostly eat chicken now," she said. The doctors had given her a list of foods to avoid, but she did not carry it around, she said.
Uzma said she knew exactly what foods she must not eat.
Uzma said people with food allergy should keep track of what they eat and what does not agree with them. "You slowly eliminate what triggers off an allergic reaction," she advised.
Dangerous
In some adults, few foods as peanuts, shellfish and fish can trigger an allergy and in children it is eggs, milk, peanuts and wheat.
But doctors said self-testing could be dangerous if the reaction was intense and caused breathing problems. One allergic reaction caused the throat and esophagus to swell, cutting off air from the lungs.
