Storytime: Nearly Killed By My True Love

So, being really tall with long limbs means I’m naturally a hazard to myself, now, add on a couple of severe allergies and you have many near death experiences. At least this, is one of the funny ones.

In October 2015 I went to India as part of an exchange trip. My Indian exchange came to London the previous June and stayed for 2 weeks. After that we messaged nearly every day, so I was so excited to go. After getting all the injection and packing, fast forward eight and half hours and I was in India.

Now, before going to India I watched Pride and Prejudice (one of my favourite films), a white-washed Bollywood film. So, in classic ignorant British tourist fashion I expected to walk out of the airport and be greeted by bhangra dancers and exotic smells of cardamom. Instead it smelled like Nigeria, disappointed is an understatement. Nigeria smells like heat. If you didn't know heat had a smell go to Nigeria and you'll know. Anyway, after getting over my disappointment I saw my exchange waiting for me outside the airport and I was excited all over again. That night we decided to meet up for dinner at a really lovely restaurant with some of the other exchange partners.

For as long as I can remember I've been allergic to nuts and when I was 10 I developed an allergy to fish. After spending 2 weeks with me and talking nearly every day for three months everyone on the trip knew. To make sure the food was safe for me to eat I asked the waiter if the food had nuts and then my exchange partner asked the waiter in Hindi just to make sure there wasn't a language barrier. He assured us there wasn't and so I ate to my heart's content. 

Introducing the villain in this story: the butter chicken burger.

The Villain (top left corner)

Like most criminals it didn't look like a potential murder. It wasn't sprinkled with nuts and didn't smell nutty at all in fact it smelt like heaven. The bun was warm and soft, the chicken was moist and perfectly flavoured. However, it was about to try to take my life. About 10 minutes after the burger I started feeling ill, my tummy started churning and I thought I already had 'Delhi Belly'. I started thinking about the strict rule of no ice-cream that my teacher told me and the fact that I had ice-cream about 2 hours after we landed (keep in mind this was a few months before I was diagnosed as lactose intolerant). So, to not create any fuss I drank some water but the feeling didn't go away. I went to the toilet, I saw my eye for red and my throat was itching. My mum being my mum had packed every medicine under the sun but me being me I had none of it on me. Luckily one of my friend's had some antihistamine so I had some. After a while it kicked in and I started feeling better.

After dinner my exchange and I went to a party with another pair of exchange partners. I was excited to see what parties were like in India so we went her friend's house and started getting ready. I started feeling ill again and tired but I thought it was jet lag or the ice-cream and my exchange really wanted to go. In the ned, we agreed that if I continued feeling ill we would leave. We arrived at the party and it was in this beautiful penthouse apartment with a great view and butlers serving drinks and food. I went on the balcony to take a photo of the view, accidentally opened my front camera and saw that my eye was swollen shut. Completely shut. Till this day I'm still sticking to the story that I thought my vision was impaired because it was dark.

 

Anyway, I screamed and ran around to find my exchange and the other British girl also ran to find her exchange. We got it the lift and you could see that my eye had swollen shut, my lips were swollen and my tongue was swollen so I had to keep breathing through my nose. At the sight of myself it the mirror I began to panic. Now, as any sane person knows panicking is never the right option but when you think either you're going to die, your mum is going to kill you for dying or both is about to happen, you panic. Combine panicking, with a swollen tongue and asthma you get an asthma attack. By the time we got downstairs I was in full panic mode. I was crying in between asthma pumps while everyone was trying to calm me down. A few minutes later the other exchange's mum came downstairs with her driver and we went to the hospital. Even though I've had a severe nut allergy for all my life I've never used my epipen (a really fat needle filled with adrenaline to save my life), so this presented another source of panic. To save my life I had to use my epipen on myself because the Indian mum didn't know how to use it and my friend was too sacred to stab me in the leg (probably because I was screaming “stab me” at her and I looked like a monster). Eventually I stab myself just minutes before I went into anaphylactic shock and passed out. Long story short I’m still alive and would definitely go back to India.

Moral of the story, nearly dying on your first night in a country half way across the world is probably not the best way to keep your mum's blood pressure down. Oh, and neither is jumping into the Ganges and telling her how the tide nearly pulled you away. 

Am I still having many near death experiences? Yep

Will I keep living my best life? Definitely