Whenever we went on holiday, my mother always took a first-aid kit packed with medicines, including cortisone injections, despite the fact that my father and I are only mildly allergic to bee stings. Our kitchen drawers at home in the Roman countryside resembled hospital cupboards: there were eight different aspirins from all over the world, 10 types of painkiller, bandages, antiseptic creams and adrenaline shots for the worst-case scenarios my mother feared. I thought it was over the top, but, looking back, my family’s obsession with ill-health saved my life.
I had been taking penicillin for throat viruses from the age of four, so when the dentist prescribed antibiotics for an aching dental implant in the summer of 2006, when I was 32, I had no reason to worry. Three days later, over breakfast, I went to take one of the pills. I hadn’t even swallowed it, just put it in my mouth, when I started sneezing, scratching everywhere – armpits, groin, the back of my hands and feet; my scalp felt as if it was on fire. I later learned that my body was rejecting the antibiotics and I had gone into anaphylactic shock.
My lips started swelling – I looked like a grouper – and my dad shouted, “Oh my God!” I rushed to the mirror and saw that my lips and eyes had puffed up. I knew what was happening, and told my mum to inject me with cortisone.
A week earlier, I had been out to dinner with my boyfriend and, even though he knew he is allergic to shrimps, he loves them too much not to eat them. He started to bloat like a balloon and told me to rush him to the hospital, where he was treated with a cortisone drip. Having seen his monstrous physical transformation, I recognised my own symptoms.
By the time my mum injected the cortisone vial, I was slipping into darkness. My hands were shaking and I could hear my heart beating in my ears. My tongue and throat inflated, and I was suffocating. The cortisone was still working its way into my system.
I have never been so scared. I clung on to my mum like a child, whispering, “I’m afraid, I’m afraid.” I saw the terror reflected in her eyes. I passed out for a split-second, falling on my knees and hitting my head on the cold, marble floor, which woke me up again. I opened my eyes, and it was like coming back from the grave. The cortisone had begun to work and I suddenly felt better. In the meantime, my dad had called an ambulance. A helicopter arrived, landing in a clear spot near my house. I knew I was out of danger, but the paramedics insisted on flying me to hospital.
Later, the doctors explained why the reaction had been so fast and violent: I had accidentally sniffed the powdery coating of the antibiotic pill when I opened the bottle, so the penicillin entered my bloodstream through my nostrils much more quickly than it would have done if I’d ingested the pill. They said that if the cortisone hadn’t been to hand, I might have died.
It took months to recover mentally. I stopped eating foods such as tomato sauce, chocolate and peanuts, scared I would react. At night, I’d wake with the feeling of suffocating. I had to see a psychiatrist, and had pharmacological tests to figure out which antibiotics I could safely take in future. Whenever I go out, I have four cortisone pills inside my purse.
Doctors have told me that I am more susceptible to anaphylactic shocks than other people, and I can’t know if a substance or food will trigger one until it happens. It’s like living with a sword of Damocles over my head. I’m scared to take a simple aspirin, or of having an accident and being given antibiotics while I am unconscious. But I can laugh at it a bit, thinking about my She-Hulk body transformation. And it has given me my nickname: Miss Grouper.
• As told to Silvia Marchetti
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