yo soy...

As a Spanish prof, it is always funny to me the importance of this phrase. "I am..." is "Yo soy...".

I happen to be allergic to soy. Even though this is not the same soy as in the conjugated first person present tense verb form, it is an even bigger pain in the posterior than this particular irregular verb is for beginning Spanish students.

On my Google home page, I have a feed of Wiki how-tos. Yesterday's tip was entitled "How to Live With a Soy Allergy."

Oh Great One, where WERE you three years ago?

I never realized I had an actual food allergy until after The Young Prince was born. I had learned that latent allergies can become active with such triggers as traumas, either physical or emotional, and I noticed things not being right following the thirty-nine hour labor and subsequent one-hour delivery of The Young Prince. It was incredibly hard on my body and I noticed that I had constant breakouts, itchy sores, on my arms and legs. Thinking it could be lotions or detergent-caused, although I had not changed my habits at all, I tried a few different things but nothing made a difference. Something nagged at me to try an exclusion diet to see if something I was eating could be causing a reaction, so I did. After fasting and then re-introducing foods individually, I reacted to soy. My heart rate sped up. I got a headache. I had a couple of hives come out on my arms. There was my answer.

Looking back, I can remember digestion problems that I simply no longer suffer that could easily have had roots in this soy allergy. I remember my tongue swelling in Japan to the point of being unable to speak clearly on various occasions, usually at the home of my Japanese teacher after having been served a delicious Japanese dinner made by her mother. I experienced a case of anaphlaxis in Taiwain in 1994 upon eating way too many wontons, a reaction which I attributed to MSG poisoning; I have since learned that MSG is soy. My tongue still swells, which will tell me if there was an ingredient that I must have missed or mistaken when reading my labels.

Unfortunately, reading labels is difficult because soy is not usually listed as "soy" but instead has a gazillion of other "aliases" that have proven to be a headache not only for me but also for anyone who is kind (and brave!) enough to cook for me or have me over for dinner (She-ra???!). Soy-free menus are not as common as, say, gluten-free menus are in restaurants, so I pretty much have to guess at what is and is not acceptable fare for me to consume.

This allergy has, of course, been since verified with a saliva test--it is NOT just "in my head."

So I will pass on the soy-sauce dipped shrimp, thank you very much.