Death by Starfruit & Other Things I Never Considered

June 22

I’m laying in my hostel dorm bed. I’m on the bottom bunk. My shower towel is draped over the bar by my face like a curtain closing me off from the rest of the room. This is good, because I feel like I’m unraveling.

I feel like I can’t relax my limbs. My neck is tight. My heart isn’t racing, but it’s pulsing, quick and steady.

I hate it. I hate that I am afraid.

And I hate that this isn’t a fear I can face head on, like my fear of heights. I can’t jump off a bridge. 

Because this is a fear that has no solidity, no eyes to stare into, nothing I can do to wrestle it into submission. 

It’s a fear of suffering, a fear of looking into strangers wide eyes while they flap useless hands, speak words I cannot understand, hesitate while I drown…

I fear them hesitating, because now that I’ve considered this scenario in my mind, I think I would hesitate. Even in the US with an English speaker, I would hesitate. And that hesitation would be mere seconds to an observer, but it might be everything to me. To whomever it is happening to. And hesitation comes from worry about misunderstanding. Would they misunderstand? Would they not? Would it even matter?

Would I already be dead?

—

I fear dying in a foreign country with strange faces.

I fear not having a chance to see my family again. I fear not having a chance to tell them I love them, but also not having a chance to touch them, to live with them. To have time cut short. Especially for such a stupid thing. 

I fear not being able to act.

—

Tonight, I had an allergic reaction. 

I ordered a dish at a restaurant. I mixed it all together when it came, per the waiter’s instructions in broken English and mimed actions. Then I mixed it some more as another young waiter walked past, again saying “mix, mix.” 

“More?” I said. 

“More.” He nodded.

It was a special regional dish in Hue, Vietnam: Cơm Hến. Clam rice or mussel rice, depending on the translation. So, mussels or clams. Shredded veggies and fruits (I can’t tell), a type of dark, round nut, and two different sauces. 

I dug in. 

It was kind of sour, not what I was expecting. Sour, a bit bitter. Kind of prickly-feeling. Not that the food is sharp, but that it tastes prickly in my mouth. I clear my throat.

What an interesting flavor, I thought. I had another bite.

After yet another bite, where I’m starting to wonder if there is any flavor, really, or if this dish is all about the weird, itchy mouth-feel. I clear my throat again, a little grunt.

Somehow that sound or action triggers something familiar. Maybe I’ve seen it in a movie. Because it’s when I clear my throat again and reach for my water, after five bites, that I begin to wonder, is there something in here that I’m allergic to?

When I was younger, my mouth used to get prickly and itchy-feeling and my face would get hot when I ate kiwi fruit. My uncle also describes his mild food allergies as an itchy-mouth feeling. 

Could be, I thought. And then, like an idiot, I ate another bite. If it’s like the kiwi fruit when I was little, it’ll just itch a bit but I’ll be fine.

Besides, I met a girl from Singapore who told me Asians don’t believe in allergies. They just eat more of the offending food until the symptoms go away. And I admired that. Allergies are, after all, something that your body feels threatened by but doesn’t need to feel threatened by.

But I realized that I wasn’t actually tasting the food because the only thing I registered was the sour and prickly feeling. I drank more water. I cleared my throat. I can get past this, I thought to myself. 

Surely, I can.

As is my usual refrain, I told myself that I was mentally tough enough to get past this. Just as I’m mentally tough enough to not itch my big bites or to not succumb to vomiting from sea sickness on a boat. Just as I’m mentally strong enough to step up to the edge of a bridge and jump despite a fear of heights. 

But as I cleared my throat again… As I lifted my phone up and turn the camera on to see if my lips are swelling (my face was red, but it’s always red in SE Asia because it’s always hot, so that’s not a good indicator)… As I gulped another large sip of water… I suddenly knew with certain clarity that I was allergic to something in this dish. And it was not going away.

I cleared my throat again, swallowed roughly. And I knew: my throat was swelling. 

And, kid you not, because I’m an idiot and because I hate making a scene and I was taught to finish my plate and because of a myriad of other societal conditioned reasons, the thought clearly crossed my mind: If I just eat faster, will this be over sooner?

Seriously, I took another bite. 

And then, as my throat seemed even more swollen, as I cleared my throat again and again and still felt the urge, it occured to me to stop eating the food.

This was not the sort of thing I could mentally tough out. 

That’s when I started to panic. I turned on the data on my phone. Pulled up Google Maps to search for pharmacies. Realized that if my throat keeps swelling, running down the street to a pharmacy and asking for an antihistamine using Google translate was not going to be a viable option. 

I typed out on Google Translate: My throat is swelling. I need a hospital. 

I watched the Vietnamese characters form. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.

I gulped more water. My mouth felt so prickly. My throat was definitely swelling: I felt the oddness in my mouth when I swallowed though, the construction of space. I swallowed again and again, as though reassuring myself that I still could swallow even if felt tiny and forced.

I added to the end of the Google translate message the word: immediately. 

Then I grabbed a 20,000 bill from my bag, my hands shaking, and walked toward the waiter who had displayed some slight English words earlier. It was only fifteen yards across the small local restaurant. I held out the phone for him. Then immediately changed my mind and pulled it back.

My mind was racing with a thousand thoughts, a thousand options. I pictured my throat closing, sinking to the ground, a gaggle of dakr-crowned Vietnamese heads bend over my body as my vision faded and my body convulsed and my panic was swallowed by a thousand tiny pricks of blackness.

But I forced those images from head and tried to focus on the facs. I was still breathing–it felt constricted, but I was still breathing.

I stopped eating the food and over a minute ago and it seemed that the swelling had either slowed or stopped, because if it had continued at the same rate, I would definitely have been struggling more to breath.

As per my usual instinct, I didn’t want to cause a panic, didn’t want to deal with the chaos, the questions, the flapping of useless hands, the embarrassment. What’s worse, I thought: collapsing on the ground so that my demand to call an ambulance was justified or calling an ambulance and later having to explain the paramedics that I over-reacted because actually the swelling just went away after a few minutes?

Obviously, dying was worse. But dramatically over-reacting was a very close second.

Be reasonable, I thought to myself. Don’t immediately escalate to DEFCON 1.

I sucked in another constricted breath of air. As long as I was still breathing, I thought, I could be rational.

I changed the Google Translate message: My throat is swelling. I need a pharmacy. I showed him the message. My hands were shaking so badly that I had to hold the phone with both hands. 

I’m sure I’d just confused the young man, if Google translate is accurately translating. Was my throat swelling? If so, that was serious. Or did I just need a pharmacy? 

Food allergy, I said a few times in English, but who knows if anyone knows enough English much less understands the somewhat cultural concept of allergy.

Either way, he and an older woman were able to tell me that there was a pharmacy about a block and half from here. I gave him the money to pay my bill, left the food sitting on the table half eaten. The swelling in my throat seemed unchanged. It hadn’t gone away, but it didn’t seem worse. I could still breath.

Of course, I felt a twinge of something–guilt? discomfort? embarrassment?–at leaving the food. Again, I distinctly remember this thought crossing my mind: should I try again to eat it? 

Clearly social conditioning is strong in this one.

I started down the block, fumbling for my phone again. My hands still shook. I couldn’t even type into Google. So I called my mom. I figured talking is good for my throat, plus I was panicking and if I did die on this dark street in Vietnam on the way to the pharmacy, I at least wanted to tell my parents I loved them one more time.

But I almost didn’t call. Years ago my brother had an allergic reaction at the bottom of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. There was no cell service and his throat swelled up and he suffered for a while, his buddy beside him.

He survived and when my mom heard what had happened, she was glad there hadn’t been cell service because there was nothing she could have done if he’d called. (By which I take to mean that she wishes she could have been there to comfort him, but also that it saved her a lot of panic and grief to not have to live through that half hour of uncertainty with him).

But I was still breathing, so I called my mom. First, I told her I thought I everything was going to be fine but that I’d had an allergic reaction needed her to Google the substitute for Benadryl in Vietnam because my fingers weren’t working properly due to adrenaline.

Just talking to her helped tremendously because I no longer felt like I was alone. I reached the pharmacy and bought a 4-pack of Nautamine for less than a 1USD. I didn’t take it, however, because I was still breathing and the Nautamine isn’t a perfect substitute for Benadryl and I am also allergic to some medications…

So I’m back in the dorm room, feeling like my whole world shifted on it’s axis and yet no one else has noticed. I look the same on the outside, except for puffy lips and an itchy mouth and my steady, too-fast heart beat reminding me I’m alive.

I look the same. But everything is different.

Because I am now afraid of something that I’ve never been afraid of before. 

I’ve been so brave. So brash. So cocky. I eat the street food and don’t worry about getting sick. I roll my eyes when people say they love Vietnamese food but then make it clear they’ve only eaten at touristy places with English-only menus. Or menus in general. I’ve been thinking I’m better than them.

And I’ve been humbled. 

Because I’m laying here writing this and I’m scared to eat breakfast tomorrow.

I’m scared to eat breakfast even though it will be something familiar: Scrambled eggs and bread. A banana pancake. I’ve eaten one or the other nearly every morning I’ve been in Vietnam. But I’m still scared to eat.

I’m even more scared of trying new things. Of feeling that brief bit of hopeless panic, of imaging the strange uncertain faces, the unknown words—Questions? Comfort? Confusion? Who knows?—as my heart rate becomes the only thing I can hear, as I gasp for something that doesn’t come. As I waver, as I fall, as I convulse. As I run out of time. As something I can’t fight and can’t even identify comes out of nowhere to seize me.

Sometimes a creative mind is a curse. 

It can build your fears so big. Paint narratives that never happened. Play them again and again with the vividness of an HD movie. Ache in your chest, yank breath from your lungs. 

That was the worst part of the waterfall incident early on in my trip to New Zealand. Not losing my phone, but imaging the other scenarios, ones where I was close when my phone toppled, close enough to instinctually reach for it, lose my balance, and fall after it.

For days after that incident, I replayed images of cracking my head on the rock protruding below. Of blood. Of unconsciousness. Of slowing sinking beneath the water, lost. Unknown.

I didn’t fear the suffering, only the inability to fight, to kick my feet, to claw for life.

And I didn’t even fall! But the minuscule possibility of that narrative haunted me. That fear of being unable to fight—and this time of actually experiencing the first stage of that helplessness…

I hope I can move past it like I did in New Zealand. Leave that fear tucked away only to be drawn out in memory and poked and prodded and still found to hurt, to scare, but not to be forefront of mind and all encompassing. 

But this, this is even more unknown. This is not reminding myself to be sure-footed, to stay away from the edge, to steer clear of uncertain heights. 

I have to eat, after all.

And I don’t want to live the rest of my life, let alone the rest of this trip, tiptoeing around what I eat, sticking to what I already know, afraid to try new things. 

I think about the symmetry of my experience and my brother’s. His was much worse than mine. His throat swelled up far more and lasted far longer. But his mysterious allergen (we suspect some kind of poison ivy-like plant) lurks somewhere in the back country, where he most loves to go. Where he feels the most confident. And mine is tucked into at least one food dish, probably more, and I love to travel and it is, perhaps, where I also feel most confident. 

Like my brother, my body has betrayed me. It has taken something I love–being adventurous–and made me fear it. 

So what now?

I guess… I carry the Nautamine where I have easy access to it. I don’t eat that dish again. I memorize the emergency number for every country that I’m in. I tell you all that I love you. I try to rewrite the vicious false narratives plaguing my mind. 

Because somehow I have to move past this, even though it feels colossally enormous right now.

I’m breathing. I’m fine. 

I will be fine. 

I just have to cry first, because I’ve lost something. I’ve lost the bravado I had in this world, the confidence of strolling down unknown streets and knowing I’ll try anything. Knowing there are a million dishes out there I’ve never even heard of just waiting to be discovered. Knowing that I am an adventurer and a discoverer.

Now I am a hesitater. I am betrayed by my body. An important piece of my identity has been stolen.  

And maybe you think I am making mountains out of molehills. Maybe I am. Or maybe you can’t relate. Maybe an adventurous, try-anything-once attitude isn’t such a big part of your identity.

It is for me. It…was.

And I desperately want it back. Is it possible?