Alpha-who, Alpha-what, that was my response the first time I heard the doctor mention this term. I had no idea this even existed. In laymans terms it means I’m allergic to beef. I know, right?? Sucks don’t it. This is my story on how I developed this and how I was diagnosed.
About seven or eight years ago I went camping/backpacking. It really was one of my first trips and I was ill prepared, but we were going to a place that was close and I had always wanted to get into this kind of stuff. Myself and another guy had decided to take our dogs along. This was a bad idea for a number of reasons but that’s another story. I’m bringing the dogs up because they were our first clue that something was going on. That night after we setup camp and ate dinner I started checking my dog for ticks and to my horror she was covered with itty bitty seed ticks. I mean covered head to tail in the tiniest ticks I have ever seen. As soon as I realized what I was looking at I started looking at my own legs, and as I guessed I was covered too. The funny thing about this is I don’t really remember any of them actually biting me or my dog, or there were none “attached.” This was probably one of the worst nights of camping I ever had, even now. These ticks were so small that I couldn’t feel them crawling on me, but I guess my dog could feel every one. So every couple of minutes she would whimper and bark. Finally at dawn I packed myself up with out the others and went on back to the car. When we got back to the car I brushed myself and the dog off before we got in my jeep and headed for home. Once back at the house I found no ticks attached to the dog but my wife found one on my back that was stuck but not too firmly. It was easily removed.
That night I had to work, which at the time was delivering pizzas. After every shift I would get a hamburger pizza and bring it home. This first night I woke up in the middle of the night shivering and vomiting. Now mind you at this point I had no idea what caused this for all I knew it was just some form of the flu. The next night I got another pizza, and again the same thing. Now I definitely know somethings up, but again there’s no such thing as a beef allergy, right? Or for that matter why is it not happening right away, why is it taking 6-8 hours later? Maybe the beef at my work is just bad? Wouldn’t other people have been reporting the same thing? The third night was the worst I got a filet from a nice restaurant. That night I had shivers, vomiting, and now hallucinations. So at this point it has been 3 nights in a row I realize now that it is obviosly something going on with the food. The next day I cut out beef and didn’t get sick. A couple of days go by and I have not been sick. I try another pizza this time pepperoni. That night violently ill. I google “what’s in pepperoni” the next day and find out that traditionally it is made with pork, but that some places use beef. I ask at my place of work and sure enough, its beef. Ok thats it I’ll just stay away from beef for a while and see what happens. A couple of weeks go by and my wife and I had been invited to attend a friends wedding. We were seated at what I like to call the stranger table. It’s that table way in the back at weddings that is basically made up of all the leftovers from all the other tables. You know, so and so’s sister, uncle Jacks ex wife, college roomates from freshman year. Anyway you get the idea. Just my luck it was a served meal – Filets and Lobster tail. Now of course they had a vegetarian option but you had to tell them up front, I had no idea. I guess I will mention that I had developed a shellfish allergy around the eigth grade, this invokes a totally different response in me and is what I consider more typical of a food allergy. It starts with itchiness and spreads to a hive situation, which usually takes about 5 minutes to start feeling. Anyway back to the wedding, so there I am sitting there with what to most people would seem like an awesome meal and I can’t eat it. The lady sitting next to me looks over at my plate and says “Are you not going to eat that?” I said “nope”, and she asked why so I told her. What I said exactly was ” I think I’m allergic to beef and I know I’m allergic to shellfish so I will just be drinking this evening.” I jokingly asked if she wanted it. Of course my wife was getting it. She laughed and said that’s not why she was asking. As it turns out she works for an Allergist at SLUH who happens to be working on a study about this thing called Alpha- Gal. The first thing she asked was if I’m a camper. I said yes. She then asks have I ever had a camping trip where I got a lot of ticks. I said yes. She hands me her card and tells me to go down to her office on Monday and see her team.
The next Monday morning I was excited but nervous. I was excited because I might finally get to the bottom of what was going on with me, but I was nervous because what if it is really bad, I mean who knows what kind of virus you can pick up from a tick. I went to her office a little worried about what kind of tests they were going to do. It turns out they just wanted to take a couple vials of blood and a board allergy test. The board test showed that I was in fact allergic to beef, shellfish, and show a slight reaction to bison. The blood test came back positive for Alpha- Gal Allergy. I can honestly tell you that I have no idea what this means. This allergy was not formally accepted until 2009. Which was about a year after my diagnosis. I believe that my blood samples helped in getting this thing officially recognized. The good news for me was that unlike most people pork and deer didn’t seem to effect me. I had come to find out later that most people that have this allergy are allergic to all mammals. This has got to be one of the weirdest allergies you can get because it truly acts like a virus. If you are at all curious about the science you should check out Alpha Gals wikipedia page.
I have spent the last several years dealing with this in a way that can best be described as trial and error. You would not believe the amount of stuff that has beef in it. I can remember one of my most recent reactions was a weird one. I could not for the life of me figure out what I had ingested that could have possibly had beef. I traced it back to a Twinkie. Yep you read that right A TWINKIE. I checked the box and sure enough the filling is made from Beef. The newer boxes just say animal products, but at that time it said clear as day Beef. Most shampoos, lotions, and soaps also contain beef. This has caused a lot of skin issues. I had pretty good luck with acne through high school, and now I’m 40 and I got the skin problems of a 15 year old. I feel like I have been pretty successful in controling the outbreaks. I can tell you this though, I am so SICK of chicken. Everywhere has the exact same chicken filet.
I’ve told this story so many times now that I finally thought maybe I should write it. I know to most this is barely a curiosity, but to the few out there with the same thing, maybe you’ll get something from my story.
An Imperfect Man 