A teenager has told of the agony of life with 40 different allergies, including to water, which, when it touches her body, makes her feel as though she wants to ‘scrape [her] skin off with a knife’.
Chloe Ramsay, 19, has suffered multiple life-threatening allergic reactions over the years, including several that landed her in hospital.
‘Once I got stuck in the rain waiting for a train and by the time I got inside, I couldn’t stop scratching — I looked like a drug addict,’ she said, adding that, on occasions, she’s told her mother, ‘I can’t do this anymore’.
Her allergy triggers — which include bananas, potatoes, sweets like Jelly Babies, pets and candles — cause her mouth and throat to swell up dangerously, and can bring her skin up in hives.
The teen, from Hampshire, has suffered allergies since she was six months old, but was only recently formerly diagnosed with pollen food syndrome — an allergy to any pollen-derived substances including sweets, fruits, and even perfumes.
This explained most of her allergies, but her most unusual is an allergy to water, known medically as aquagenic urticaria.
Luckily, drinking the water caused no issues, but contact with her skin is agony.
She said: ‘It can be itchy and painful, like having ants crawling on your skin.
Chloe Ramsay, 19, can no longer eat fruit due to her condition, and is unable to let water touch her skin
‘The allergy came almost suddenly. I would be fine taking showers then one day I started itching and each time was worse.
‘I changed my shampoo, conditioner, body wash, flannel, scrubber, and the water temperature — nothing helped.’
She added: ‘Once I got stuck in the rain waiting for a train and by the time I got inside, I couldn’t stop scratching — I looked like a drug addict.
‘I felt like I wanted to scrape my skin off with a knife.’
New allergies frequently pop up and their severities can change too. Chloe strives to keep track of them using a colour-coded Excel spreadsheet.
Chloe, a carer, said: ‘We found out about my first allergies when I was six months old and my mum was weaning me.
‘If I was given potatoes or bananas I would go blue and pass out, but luckily my reactions aren’t that bad any more.
‘They change, but currently I can’t eat foods like strawberries, kiwis, fruit juices and I can’t use scented shampoos and body washes.’
The teen keeps track of her allergies via an Excel spreadsheet that is constantly updated
She currently uses twice-monthly injections to keep her allergic reactions under control, which she expects will be the case dor the rest of her life.
She said: ‘So far, nobody has been on that injection for life. Apparently I’m one of the unlucky three per cent that wasn’t completely cured by it.
‘I’m so unlucky – I used to get quite upset, but I just have to laugh it off now.
‘I’m allergic to so many things that my parents joke ‘what will you be allergic to next, oxygen?’.
Chloe remembers frequent trips to hospital as a child — eating a banana or potatoes would send her into anaphylactic shock.
But over years, the hospital used a ‘microdosing’ technique with her allergy triggers, to train the body not to metabolise the foods without triggering an extreme reaction.
Some allergies faded away over the years, while new ones emerged.
The reactions were ‘invasive’, and involved swelling lips, redness and a ‘scratchy’ sensation when she breathing.
She said: ‘At school I used to have my own little blue band so the dinner staff knew my allergies.
‘They had to make my food from scratch.
She often comes out in hives when she comes into contact with water. Luckily, though, she can drink it.
‘Now I’m at university, I struggle because a lot of the social stuff is based around food and I have to constantly be checking the menu.
‘It makes me quite anxious to be sitting around food that I know I can’t eat.’
It’s estimated that at least one in five Brits suffer an allergy, with the most common being hayfever, or pollen allergy.
Government figures state that around six per cent of the UK have a food allergy — most commonly to nuts.
Allergies to foods like milk, fish, shrimp and mussels are thought to be uncommon.
The most severe type of allergic reaction is known as anaphylaxis. This life-threatening event — responsible for roughly 5,000 hospitalisations a year — happens very quickly.
The tongue, throat and mouth begin to swell and patients have difficulty breathing until, eventually, the swelling blocks off their airway, making it impossible to get adequate oxygen into the lungs.
If you suspect someone is suffering an anaphylactic reaction, use an adrenaline auto-injector (such as an EpiPen) if you have one, and call for an ambulance, the NHS advises
