There's a fungus among us!

 I can't believe it's fall already.  I'm so not ready for summer to go away!  But at least it's still summer-ish so I've been hanging out with Veronica and Eddie.

 Veronica posed for a picture with me.  She's munching on an almond.  I gave Eddie an almond too, but he rushed home to hide it.  He knows I love almonds and I think he was afraid I would eat it.  Silly chipmunk!

So I bet you're wondering what I've been up to for all these months. Well... I've been feeling kind of icky, that's what I've been up to. But I'm starting to feel better now.  You see... Mother Nature has decided that being gluten sensitive and lactose intolerant wasn't fun enough for me so she has gifted me a mold allergy with food mold sensitivities.  

I know what your thinking. 

"Food mold?  Ewe, why would you eat moldy food, Squeak?  Why?"

Well... about that...

 A lot of the foods we eat every day are loaded with mold.  Loaded with it!  For most people, it's not a problem.  But me... I'm not like most people!  

It all started with an itch.  An all over body itch but mostly an itchy scalp.  

 And you know what people think when they see a kid scratching her head.

Eek! Lice!  

But that wasn't the problem.  

Maybe it was the chemicals from my pink hair dye... so I had to stop coloring my hair and change shampoos and stop using shampoo... but none of that helped.  I didn't have dandruff or dry skin or eczema or hives or anything.  Just this crazy mad invisible itch.

Maybe it was caused by something I was eating, doing, coming into contact with... but what?  So I had to start a journal to keep track of everything.  Every.  Single.  Thing.  Everything I ate, drank, where I went, what I did, how I felt, slept, pooped... seriously! Pooping, just what a girl wants to write about in her diary!  On the plus side, I got my own I-Phone so I could use a journaling app!  (Totally recommend mySymptoms Food & Symptoms Tracker app by the way.)

Journaling helped track down some of my biggest itch triggers.  Eating leftover cooked meat and hard boiled eggs, cheese, canned tuna fish, lunch meat, mushrooms, juice, canned tomato products, chocolate, peanuts (that one horrified Veronica! That's why we share almonds now) and the list goes on.  Knowing what to avoid was helpful but why where these foods making me itch?

Months pass.
I had good days and bad days and days when I thought I would scratch myself bald! 

 Bald, I tell you!

Finally, the allergist uncovered a hidden mold allergy.

All those foods that make me itch have one thing in common.  They all have a high mold content. And when all those high mold foods combine with all the mold spores floating around in the air (mold is everywhere!) it overwhelms my body and makes me itchy.  But once we knew what the problem was, we could start working at making it better.