ryork
Senior Member
Really enjoyed that grilled filet I posted up Wed evening. Might be the last one I have, at least for quite some time. Some 3-4 hrs after I finished that meal, started having severe stomach pain, nausea and other GI type issues. After a couple hours of that, I started having large hives pop up all over my arms, torso, and thigh area. That progressed into some sort of tingling type sensation in my hands and tightness in my chest. I was by myself at our Lookout Mountain property which is remote to say the least, and so ended up driving myself to the ER in Fort Payne at 4:00 AM as I wasn't sure if this was going to get any worse. Turns out, looks like I have contracted Alpha-Gal Syndrome (AGS) from a tick bite I had a couple weeks ago. Feel perfectly normal again 24 hrs later after a full night's sleep. I try to be very mindful of ticks, but missed this tiny lone star tick that got on my back in a spot I couldn't see or touch. About had to have got on me in the yard or in my garden. So, will be staying away from mammalian meat, dairy etc. Have an appointment with an allergist next week that I hope will shed some light on maybe if this will just be limited to red meat or will this happen with pork, milk, butter, etc as well and get an epi-pen as a just in case there is some worse reaction down the road. Doesn't seem to be a lot of consensus or knowledge about this in the medical world from what I can tell. I can say that for as much as I enjoy a piece of seared medium rare salted red meat, I will gladly avoid it for as long as necessary after that episode. What I heard about this before was that it seemed to be permanent, but from what I can glean from some reading and other's stories in the last day or so, it does seem to go away for a lot of folks after a while (measured in years). I don't like it, but is what it is at this point. I get bored with chicken real quick, but thankfully I'm a huge fan of seafood. Guess it could be used as an excuse to fish more as well. Be careful with ticks, they're nasty little critters!