For those who have been salivating over LAist's "Thai One On" series of Thai Town restaurant reviews, but can't partake due to allergies, this entry is for you.

It’s a surreal feeling when you first realize you’re experiencing anaphylaxis. At the time, I thought I was coming down with a cold because my throat started to feel tight and scratchy. Only once I spotted hives on my arm and realized my airway seemed to be closing up did I realize something was very wrong.

Though I’d never had a life-threatening peanut allergy reaction in the past, I’d still been vigilant when it came to my food. Prior to eating that meal, I’d asked our waitress if it contained any nuts; she assured me it was nut-free, so I dug in—thinking it was hummus. As I later learned, it was so not hummus.

Once I realized I was in danger, a friend called for an ambulance while I took a Benadryl I happened to have in my purse. Someone contacted the kitchen and learned that the waitress had given me misinformation—rather than hummus, I had eaten a peanut-based dish that contained ground-up peanuts and peanut oil (though I must admit, they did season it to taste a lot like hummus). For me, it was death on a plate.

I got to the hospital just in time, and they immediately pumped copious amounts of Benadryl into me. Once I was almost back to normal, and very sleepy, they said that from that point forward, I always needed to carry an EpiPen with me…just in case. (If someone is going into anaphylactic shock, they can shove this device against their thigh and it will auto-inject epinephrine.)

I hadn’t always been allergic to peanuts. When I was a kid, my parents gave me a bag of them in my lunch every day, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were my favorite snack. But sometime during the middle of the seventh grade, I started having sneezing fits every afternoon after lunch.

So my mom took me to the allergy doctor to figure out what was wrong. They performed a test in which they made a number of tiny pinpricks on my back—with each needle containing a small amount of an allergen. When they were done, the peanut reaction was off the charts.

Unfortunately, although they had allergy desensitization shots for things like trees, pollen, weeds, etc., they didn’t have an effective system for treating food allergies. So it was up to me to be careful.

Prior to the “hummus incident,” the worst I’d experienced from accidentally consuming peanuts (or something “made on equipment in a plant that also processes peanuts”) was a nasty allergy attack. I’d sneeze uncontrollably, get a sinus headache and just feel horrible until I took a Benadryl and slept for a couple hours.

But nowadays I have to be extra careful. My physician has told me that, to be safe, I pretty much have to stay away from Thai, Indian and Chinese cuisine due to the risk of peanut oil cross-contamination.

Although that’s a bummer, I do know it could be a lot worse. I’ve met people who can go into anaphylactic shock from just the smell of peanuts, and the fear of this type of reaction is why many airlines have stopped distributing peanut packets on planes.

I’m no physician, but based on this experience, my recommendation is that if you have ever experienced even a mild reaction to peanuts or another food in the past, it might be a good idea to speak with your physician and get some basic allergy tests done.

I feel fortunate that my first brush with anaphylaxis didn’t lead to extreme shock. Nowadays I won’t go anywhere without my EpiPen; if it’s something you might need, trust me when I say it’s the kind of thing you’ll want to know in advance.

Photo by Reznicek111 via Flickr.