The Apple That Bit Back: Oral Allergy Syndrome Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe oral allergy syndrome, the itch and tingle some people with hay fever feel after raw fruit, vegetables and nuts. Writers range from a sixteen-year-old bass player in Seattle to a woman who had her first allergy at seventy, and from Yakima to Helsinki, Nagoya and Buenos Aires. There is an orchard manager who can no longer eat his own Honeycrisp, a chef who cannot taste his own salad, a trucker living on truck stop food, a dental hygienist who linked bananas and avocados to her latex gloves, and a pharmacist in Lyon who spent four months on a school canteen plan. Many trace their mouths to birch, grass, ragweed or cedar season and notice they settle in winter. Others describe three years of allergy shots, a tablet that did not fix their fruit, a supervised food challenge in a hospital chair, and blood test results they could not read alone. Daily life turns up in smoothies, a juice cleanse, a first date, a wedding menu and a college dining hall. Several stories go beyond the mouth: a peach that ended in the emergency room, hazelnuts and an auto-injector, a tingle that spread. Some found that treating their hay fever eased their food symptoms and some did not, and a few still struggle.

Who it's for

For anyone whose mouth itches after raw apples, carrots, cherries or melon, for parents of children who refuse raw fruit, and for people with hay fever who never connected the two.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 237 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.