EpiPen and Food Allergies

So the current foods I'm allergic to are milk, egg, wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, oat, mustard, barley, and fish. Got it. I've never actually had an allergic reaction to barley itself specifically, mainly due to the fact that I'm not of legal drinking age. Right. I forgot about beer. There is definitely barley in beer. I'd like you to meet Alex. My name is Alexander Hajju. I'm 19 years old. I live in New York City, and I'm in this interview because of the sheer amount of food allergies I have. Alex has lived his whole life with food allergies, and that means his life has been a little bit different in some surprising ways. Here's an example. I've never eaten a single food from any restaurant ever in my life. I always bring my own food. I typically just ask for an empty plate. A lot of places, when I tell them I have allergies, often say, like, listen. What are your allergies? Maybe we can try to accommodate for you. I show them the list, and the answer always ends up being, I'm sorry. I don't think we can do all of these. Never mind. So no restaurants or no restaurant food, at least. Alex has a particularly severe set of food allergies, but he's not alone. He's one of many kids born in recent decades who have severe food allergies, allergies that force him to scrutinize every single thing he eats. But even though Alex is super careful and always watchful, sometimes something happens. This is about two years ago. Previously to this, tuna showed up low on my blood test. It didn't show up on the skin test at all. I had an oral exam for tuna and nothing came up, so the allergist cleared me and said to just take it easy because I still had an allergy to other fish. So I'd have, like, small amounts of tuna, increasing them a little bit every time I had it. This was, I believe, my eighth or ninth time having tuna, and I had the meal at home before I went to tennis practice. I get to the court and I start playing. After about ten minutes in the warm up, I'm feeling like, man, my wrist's really hurting. I don't think I can play with this. And I also noticed that, like, I was breathing really hard and my face felt like it was burning a little. But I wrote that off as it was my asthma acting up because I was playing tennis. Then I call my dad down from the upper level Mhmm. And I tell him, hey, dad, my wrist hurts. I don't think I'm gonna be able to play. And dad asks me, like, is it that bad that you're crying? I was like, what do you mean? I'm I wasn't crying. I'm fine. And he says, you look really bad. So they know they need to leave. Alex takes some …