A young woman with more than 40 allergies – including water – has to use a colour-coded spreadsheet to keep track of them all. Chloe Ramsay, 19, was born with several food allergies, and would even go into anaphylactic shock after eating certain foods such as bananas and potatoes.
While she no longer ends up hospitalised from allergic reactions thanks to treatments in childhood, she currently has a list of 40 things that can cause her mouth and throat to swell up dangerously, or bring her skin up in hives. They include kiwis, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and grapes.
Chloe was diagnosed with ‘pollen food syndrome’ – an allergy to any pollen-derived substances – including sweets, fruits, and even perfumes in June 2023. This explained most of her allergies – but her most unusual is an allergy to water, known as aquagenic urticaria. Fewer than 100 cases of an allergy to water have been reported in medical literature.
When unmedicated, showers cause Chloe to flare up in hives and getting caught in the rain leaves her “wanting to scrape [my] skin off with a knife”. New allergies frequently pop up and their severities can change too – meaning Chloe has to keep track of them with a colour-coded spreadsheet.
Chloe, a carer, from Havant, Hampshire, said: “We found out about my first allergies when I was six months old and my mum was weaning me. If I was given potatoes or bananas I would go blue and pass out, but luckily my reactions aren’t that bad any more. They change, but currently I can’t eat foods like strawberries, kiwis, fruit juices and I can’t use scented shampoos and body washes. With the water allergy, it just came on one day – I thought I’d used a body wash I was allergic to, but it got worse.
“Whenever I washed my hands I would get massive rashes and felt like ants crawling on my skin. I’ll have to be giving myself injections to treat my allergies for life.” Chloe reminisced about frequent hospital visits as a child for EpiPens and medication due to her severe allergic responses. When she ate a banana or potatoes she would go into anaphylactic shock and was rushed to A&E.
Over the years, the hospital applied a ‘microdosing’ method to help her body adapt and lessen the severity of her allergic reactions. Chloe detailed how some allergies waned, while others appeared, leaving her unable to eat any fruits due to “invasive” symptoms like swollen lips, redness, and a scratchy feeling in her throat.
In connection with what would later be diagnosed as pollen food syndrome, she discussed needing to avoid items like perfumes, scented soaps, and even wood-smoked meats owing to the pollen in the trees used in their preparation, adding: “At school I used to have my own little blue band so the dinner staff knew my allergies.
“They had to make my food from scratch. Now I’m at university, I struggle because a lot of the social stuff is based around food and I have to constantly be checking the menu. It makes me quite anxious to be sitting around food that I know I can’t eat.”
In October 2022, she began experiencing hives when her skin came into contact with water. Her reactions were sometimes so intense that she would be unable to focus on anything else. She was later diagnosed with aquagenic urticaria – an allergy to water on her skin – but fortunately, drinking water did not cause any issues.
Chloe said: “It can be itchy and painful, like having ants crawling on your skin. The allergy came almost suddenly. I would be fine taking showers then one day I started itching and each time was worse. I changed my shampoo, conditioner, body wash, flannel, scrubber, and the water temperature – nothing helped.”
The condition worsened over time and became debilitating for her. She said: “Once I got stuck in the rain waiting for a train and by the time I got inside, I couldn’t stop scratching – I looked like a drug addict. I felt like I wanted to scrape my skin off with a knife. I told even told my mum ‘I can’t do this any more’.”
Last year, Chloe was introduced to a monthly injectable medication to treat her severe allergies after a medical board approved the drug due to the severity of her condition. She has to give herself the injection twice a month to manage her allergies, and it’s possible she’ll need this treatment for the rest of her life. The medication has nearly wiped out her water allergy, but she still has to be careful with perfumes and foods derived from pollen.
Chloe carefully records her food reactions using a traffic-light colour coded system on an Excel spreadsheet. She said: “So far, nobody has been on that injection for life. Apparently I’m one of the unlucky 3% that wasn’t completely cured by it.”
But despite her struggles, Chloe maintains a sense of humour about her situation: “I’m so unlucky – I used to get quite upset, but I just have to laugh it off now. I’m allergic to so many things that my parents joke ‘what will you be allergic to next, oxygen?'”