The Curious Case of the Diseased Hand

Labor Day Weekend I went upstate to my favorite farm for some produce picking.  Apples, corn, plums...We picked some fresh corn, one of my most favorite things to eat.  It was pretty tight in the corn field and I had to push stalks out of my way to get through.

Well, I noticed later I had some scratches on my hand and arm, but didn't think anything of it.

And a few days later (when I went to Disney World) the rash started. First it was small red dots on my hand--not raised or itchy or painful. Just red marks all over my hand. These marks looked worse but never felt worse. I looked like I had a weird skin disease. Ew. I shuck and eat plenty of corn without harm, but was it possible I'm allergic to corn pollen???

I wanted to get to the bottom of this so I went and saw a dermatologist.

1. After explaining what happened, she said she had never seen anything like that. Comforting. It wasn't a corn allergy, but more of a mild poison ivy-like skin reaction, minus the insane itching. So either the oils on the corn leaves irritated my hand and caused an inflammatory response, or I got micro-lacerations that got irritated.

2. The spots had darkened so my hand looked like that of a 75 year old, minus the wrinkles. Or that I had some henna that went horribly wrong. The derm said these spots would not go away quickly, that the inflammatory response on my hand hyperpigmented. Super. I'm going to walk around with old lady hand for the next several months. I made extra special effort to exfoliate and use fade cream.  It's been almost two months and the marks are very, very faint.  Definitely more like light freckle than weird skin disease. Whew.

3. I got tested for allergies. The results were no big surprise: very allergic to birch pollen (spring allergies, plus the non-citrus tree fruits), ragweed (fall allergies), cats, and dustmites.  The macadamia nut allergy didn't come up at all, curiously. But when I told her about it, she thought it was strange I was only allergic to macadamia and no other type of nut.  I am supposed to avoid them. Unlike the fruit allergy, which is just itchiness but won't kill me, the macadamia nuts could in theory close my throat and kill me. This saddens me, since I LOVE macadamia nuts. LOVE them. (aside: I asked if it was a common allergy and she said macadamia nuts are expensive so fewer people eat them, and thus less data on it. I felt like there might have been some judgment there, like I am some bourgeois nut connoisseur or something.)