A (shell) fish tale
I was in junior high when I first started to learn to cook real food. I’d been baking cookies and treats before then, but I didn’t take on actual meals until I took a Home Economics class. Our class was taught by Mrs. B, a thin, nervous woman with curly hair who knew how wrong things could quickly go in a room full of 13-year-olds with access to knives and hot surfaces. I can't recall very well what we actually made in class other than Ebelskivers using the special pan that Mrs. B (the initial was never explained. My guess is she had a hard-to-pronounce Danish name) brought from home. That was something new. But other than learning to make Danish pancakes, I mainly remember the emphasis Mrs. B put on safety. She talked at length about cooking temperatures, expiration dates and the necessity of thoroughly cleaning knives and washboards after use. We all knew how to spell ‘botulism’ and ‘salmonella’ by the end of that school year!
Still, I was empowered and excited to practice cooking at home, especially because I was so bored with my mom's cooking. She wasn’t that adventurous in the kitchen and by the time I reached junior high, she was just about done with the whole enterprise of feeding a family of six. Instead of her usual pancakes or waffles, I made apple crepes for Sunday brunch. Then I took on dinner: I made simple, but relatively exotic at the time dishes like Chicken Kiev, carefully pounding chicken breasts and then rolling them up with cheese and herbs, and Shrimp Scampi, happily deveining the shrimp, and sauteing it with a mess of chopped garlic and big dollops of butter, amazed that it cooked up so quickly. My dad especially loved the Scampi, as did I, and I went on to make it semi-regularly.
Fish, calamari, mussels, clams and shrimp. Other than a few phases of veganism, I’ve eaten fish and shellfish throughout my life. One of my favorite dishes to order in West Coast restaurants even now is bouillabaisse or fisherman's stew. There's an especially excellent version at Fishwives in Pasadena (pictured above), and if it's a special at Speisekammer, here in Alameda, I'm all over it. I almost ordered the cioppino at Salty's at the Seattle Airport just the other day on my way home from Alaska, but the near $50 price put me off.
It was a good thing I was feeling cheap at SEA.
On Tuesday, Erica came over in the afternoon to talk about our show on Saturday and share some new songs. We were so busy talking and playing and laughing that I didn’t think about dinner. When Kwame came home hungry, he suggested we go to our local taqueria instead of cooking. So we walked across the street and I ordered the Camarones Rancheros, a previously dependable dish for me. Kwame went for fish tacos, Erica got a burrito, and we all enjoyed our meal.
It was another gorgeous summery day in Alameda. After we finished eating we set out to walk to the beach. Palm trees, Brown Pelicans overhead, children playing in the sand. The California beach scenery felt fresh again after nearly a week of Alaskan landscapes.
We were about 20 minutes from home when I suddenly felt like something bit me. "I'm so itchy!" I said, taking off my long-sleeved shirt and seeing a raised bump on my wrist. We all mused about the unusually high humidity and hot weather and the possibility of me having picked up a sand flea or some such on the beach. Another few minutes went by and I felt warmer, then like I had been bitten on my stomach. My neck started to itch.
“Do you see anything?” I asked Kwame and Erica. They confirmed that my neck was increasingly splotchy.
A few minutes later, I felt a bump on my tongue and a light bulb went off. Was it something about the shrimp? At a stoplight, I turned to them and asked them to look up what to do for an allergic reaction to seafood.
Benadryl. We didn't know if we had any at home. Erica said she usually carried it but had brought another purse. I asked Kwame to run ahead to get the car to go to the store. I wasn’t panicked, but I could feel hives starting to break out everywhere. This was new! Still, I thought if I got home to some Benadryl and a cool bath I’d be OK. We looked up Epsom salts. Yes, those were good for hives, too.
By the time we got to the house, I was covered in bumps. I ran a bath with cold water and Epsom salts and began to feel some relief. But when I got out of the tub when Kwame was back with the Benadryl, I was dizzy. I knew I was not going to ride this out on my own. I managed to get my clothes back on and was just reaching for my thongs. “Help me,” I recall saying, before passing out on the foyer floor. By that time, Erica had called 911. Within a few minutes, a truckload of 20-something-year-old paramedics arrived at our doorstep.
Mortifying might be too strong a word, but getting loaded into a gurney on the sidewalk is beyond humbling. I felt slightly better laying down, although I could feel my mouth swelling. My blood pressure, I was told, was “clinically low.”
Later, I would read that these were all symptoms of ananaphylactic reaction and learn that you can develop a shellfish allergy — when your immune system mistakenly identifies a certain protein in shellfish as harmful — after a lifetime of eating it. According to UC Davis Health, “shellfish is the leading cause of food allergy in the U.S.'' and “affects around 3% of adults and a little over 1% of children.” And it's more common in women.
The paramedic gave me a shot of Epinephrine, placed an IV and took me to ER where I was given a dose of Prednisone. After 15 minutes, I had enough sense to realize I didn’t have my phone or any shoes. I got a nurse’s attention — I really don’t like hospitals but I can say that everyone at Alameda hospital was very kind and upbeat — to see if Kwame was in the waiting area. When my heart rate got back up to normal, they let him take me home.
I’ve been kind of stunned by it all (as were Kwame and Erica, who both kept their cool despite the circumstances). And tired out. All that swelling and contracting and blood pressure fluctuation left me with the feeling of being rung out. And I’ve been mulling over how changeable bodies are over time. I just recently had an osteopenia and osteoarthritis diagnosis: I wonder if the calcium loss and joint degeneration and compromised ability to metabolize shellfish might all related. Questions for my doctor.
In the meantime, I’m grateful for paramedics (and Benadryl and Epinephrine), that I was with loved ones when this happened, and that I’ve enjoyed many delicious, shellfish-based meals over the years. As another friend pointed out, with so much pollution and changes in the chemistry of the ocean due to climate change, laying off shellfish isn’t such a bad idea regardless of this new development.
Because Erica and I were just talking new and potential songs before my fateful meal, I decided a ditty was in order:
No more shrimp for me
No more shrimp for me
Unless I want to itch and get real bumpy
No, no more shrimp for me
Goodbye to scampi
My favorite bouillabaisse
So long cioppino
I’d rather not go so red in the face
No more shrimp for me
No more shrimp for me
We had a nice long run
But passing out and ambulance rides
Are really not much fun
Hello Epinephrine
Sure you can ride along
Though I’d rather not ever invoke you
Or use you in another song
No more shrimp for me
No more shrimp for me
Unless I want to scare my friends and get real bumpy
No, no more shrimp for me
-DC 8/23