Hello.

Hey Everyone,
I don't really have any idea how to do this sort of thing but I love writing and thought it would be fun to share my story and maybe be able to vent a little (or a lot) here and there, so here goes.

You see, the thing is, sometimes being allergic to milk can be VERY lonely, so I hoping that maybe, just maybe someone else who feels this way will be able to read my blog and realize that really they aren't so lonely after all. I guess I'm kind of hoping this blog will help me feel that way too. Don't get me wrong, I am a very happy person who has been blessed with a lot of very loving people in my life,  with that being said I think that EVERYONE will feel lonely at least once in their life no matter how many people are surrounding them. And I think that the chances of feeling lonely increase a lot when you're allergic to something that EVERYBODY else eats and drinks with every meal. The other reason I think I feel kinda lonely is because nobody I know, is actually allergic to milk either.

Maybe I should start from the beginning, well probably not the very beginning because that would take a while...hum. Okay so first I should probably tell you all a little about myself. I will be turning 19 on April 19th this year (2015). I still live with my parents and I will finish my first (and with the way things are going right now, possibly my last) semester of college this April. Hahaha.

You should know that I have been sick my entire life. For as long as I can remember I have never felt quite right. It got worse the older I got. I didn't really notice it until I one day realized that its not exactly normal to catch every, and I mean EVERY, sickness you ever come in contact with. I really started noticing something was wrong right after I got my first job working at a local restaurant when I turned 16. The restaurant I worked at is very well known for the ahhhmazing ice cream shakes so you can imagine that of course I ate one every night that I worked. This is when things started going bad. I started getting super weak and tired all the time, which you would almost expect for someone eating ice cream all the time, but here was the weird part, I would get very sever stomach pains. They got worse and worse the longer time went on. At first they were just kind of an annoyance but by the end I could barely move. I remember coming home from school and just laying on the floor right inside the door for the rest of the night because it hurt so bad. I could hardly move at work and would come home early, or not even go in, way too often. The only way I could really describe the pain was that I used to have nightmares every night that a guy was stabbing me in the stomach with knifes covered in acid. We went to every doctor we could possibly think of that was close enough to drive to. I even remember going to the ER on three separate occasions. They all told me the same thing, over and over, that I was perfectly fine and that nothing was wrong with me. I would cry for days. I couldn't understand why someone would tell me that nothing was wrong, obviously there was something very wrong with me.

Finally we did the only thing we could come up with which was cut everything out of my diet. And when I say everything I mean everything. I lived off of plain salad for probably 3 months. During these three months I lost about 20 pounds. I wasn't allowed to eat anything but salad, not even the dressing. We gradually started adding more and more things to my diet. It seemed to help a little but it definitely wasn't solving any problems. I forgot to mention earlier that I also have had eczema my entire life and at this point it started to get really horrible. I had it everywhere but the back of my legs were the worst. It got so bad I couldn't wear anything but sweats and loose PJs for a while.

One day my Grandma told me about her dermatologist, this is when things started to look up. The dermatologist couldn't believe how bad I was and she was the first one who actually believed that there was something wrong with me. I remember on my first appointment with her, she looked me in the eye and promised me that no matter what it took, she was going to help me and she was going to heal me. I will never forget that. She referred me to her friend, who is an allergist and we met with her soon after. Thankfully we have great insurance so she was able to do an allergy blood test on me that originally costs $5,000, we got it for free. When we got the results I was absolutely relieved and devastated to learn that I was off the charts allergic to milk. That's how my story begins, I'm going to bed now but will continue with this later on in another post. Thanks for reading. :)