I was talking to someone on a thread about alpha gal and wrote out a short version of my struggles. I figured I could post it here too.
If you have time to look into the bill, PLEASE do 🙏
I was bitten by 1 singular tick last year. I was fishing with my family. Found it when I went to shower later. Just plucked it off and threw it away. I’ve had thousands of ticks in my lifetime and it was never a problem so I didn’t think about it.
About 3 months later I was getting really sick every day. Constantly have a tummy ache and my joints and back were aching like they never had before. I have degenerative disc disease so I was familiar with back pain but this was different.
I could barely move.
Month after that, my muscles were so weak I couldn’t carry my 7 month old daughter at the time. I was collapsing and falling into furniture and hurting myself, I was puking so much blood was coming out.
Month after that my ankle suddenly ballooned up huge, it was so painful. It was a huge cyst. I went to the dr the same day, had it aspirated, and it refilled by that night.
Next morning, there were more on my legs and shins. Next day they were on the other leg. Weeks went by of me being in absolute misery. I couldn’t eat and lost around 50-60 pounds in like 2.5 months. I was so weak I couldn’t think and I was in so much pain I couldn’t leave my house. I genuinely thought I was dying. So much so that I freaked out and super decorated my house for Christmas because i thought that it was the only christmas I was going to get to spend with my little girl.
Throughout all of it I was working with a team of doctors and constantly researching autoimmune diseases, allergies, viruses, anything and everything to try and figure it out and a video of a girl talking about how she has AGS and it flipped her health upside, I decided to google it.
My symptoms aligned so I immediately cut out all meat and dairy just to see.
I started to recover immediately
I asked my doctor to test me and she was very skeptical because of how it presented on me but low and behold- I was right
There is no cure. There is very little research done, and it is not considered a major allergen federally so accidental exposure is extremely common. There are treatments to reduce reactions but they don’t help everyone and it’s not known what the long term effects are because there has been 0 research.
It is the #1 anaphylactic hospitalization cause in America, it’s a rising problem, but there are ways people can help!
There’s a bill you can sign to help get alpha gal listed as a major allergen so companies have to disclose anima by products.
I linked below about the bill and more information about alpha gal 🖤
Sorry for the lost text 😅