As I write this Sunday morning, my eyes are swollen almost shut and I’m waiting to see if the ozone machine I ordered will actually arrive. (Update: Nope. Won’t be here until Monday, which is today.)

It all started Friday night, when I left a pot of chicken soup on the stove. I turned it off and went to bed. I woke up at 3:30 to an apartment filled with smoke. I didn’t turn the flame off all the way! (Interestingly enough, my wired smoke detectors did not go off.)

I have asthma — mild asthma, but certainly not capable of standing up to smoke inhalation. It sucks.

I wiped down everything in my kitchen, but it didn’t help. It was so bad, I drove to Jersey Saturday night just to have dinner at a local diner, where I could breathe clean air for an hour or so. (Liver and onions, which I love but never think to make for myself. Yum!)

My windows were open, HEPA filters a-humming, and fans blowing when I got back. No improvement at all, so I ordered an ozone generator in desperation. Amazon indicated I would get it overnight. I used one many years ago when I had a similar problem after buying a memory foam mattress, and couldn’t tolerate the off-gassing fumes. It worked pretty well.

This was not a good couple of weeks, not at all. My histamine intolerance is through the roof, and like the last time I had a flareup several years ago, my diet has gotten more and more restrictive. A couple of weeks ago, I had some peanut butter and crackers and holy Moses, that was scary. My throat swelled up and I was having a teensy bit of trouble breathing until the Benadryl kicked in. Same thing with some honey barbeque potato chips. Oh, also when I made some Shake and Bake chicken. I had to rinse off the spices before I could eat it. (My doctor has since ordered me an epi pen.)

Also, anything fermented. I love balsamic vinegar glaze, but right now, it feels like I’m pouring battery acid down my throat. Most cheeses bother me, too. I can eat a little bit of ice cream, but who can live on that?

Histamine is in everything, so unlike people who have plain old food allergies, I can have a surprise reaction to anything. Like tuna fish! A couple of weeks ago, I had something they call scombroid fish poisoning. The histamine levels in tuna go through the roof when it has not been kept cold enough at each step of the supply chain. I filed a complaint with the state, which kicked it back to a city agency.

“What is that? I never heard of it,” the city worker said when he called. “I never heard of it, either,” I told him.

I love tuna salad, it’s one of my favorites. (Yes, I know about the mercury. I only eat it every every ten days or so.) This experience made me very paranoid.

But wait, there’s more! I apparently now have something called “burning mouth syndrome,” also called glossodynia. Just what it sounds like. Pretty much anything I eat hurts. But I can’t see a specialist without a referral, so that goes onto the checklist.

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. I assume some of this was triggered by long covid, but the histamine intolerance flared up years before covid. Maybe it’s the Lyme, I dunno. Maybe I just have fucked-up DNA. (My late ex-husband used to tell me I should live in a hermetically-sealed penthouse. But he’s dead and I’m not, so joke’s on you, pal!)

My friend Nicole Belle and I always joked that blogging kills, because almost every blogger we know has some kind of weird autoimmune disease. So maybe that’s it.

Maybe Trump and the fascist takeover is a little bit stressful.