Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Wine Weirdness

It's so weird. Yes, there's plenty of weirdness in Julia World, but here's another example:

It's the sensation that occasionally - not always - occurs when I drink alcohol. It seems to affect my scalp and starts out as sharp pinpricks scattered all around my head, and then each pinprick morphs into an intense stop everything and scratch itch. Ew. If I don't take the hint and continue to drink, my face turns bright red and I break out in a sweat. While raking my fingernails across every inch of my head.

Now isn't that attractive.

This delightful experience is so random that I have a hard time knowing which wines or other spirits to avoid since the reaction isn't consistent. John has learned that if my eyes glaze over and I start furiously scratching, he slides whatever adult beverage I have in front of me over to his side of the table. What a guy.

My most recent head-scratching episode happened last Sunday, after taking just a small sip of Communion wine. I was in front of the congregation in the Communion line and heading to my seat waaaaay in the back of church when it started.  Oooh.....it was almost impossible to ignore. I didn't want to start frantically clawing my scalp in full view of everyone and struggled to maintain my composure. Must not scratch....must not scratch.....must not scratch.......

You can bet that I looked pretty strange as I trotted back to my pew with bulging eyes and twitching hands as I tried to avoid plunging both hands into my hair. Must not
scratch.....must not scratch.....

Usually Terese is up in the choir loft, but last Sunday was out of town. Too bad. She missed a good show.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was it red or white wine ?
I have a firend who can't drink white wine, it give her horrible headache, while red wine doesn't affect her a bit.

Maybe it's only when it's bad wine, so you have to drink only really good one, too bad ^_^

annie said...

I'm with Jazzcat in regards to white wine. The last time I drank white wine (from California), I practically broke out in hives. Then I read it contained sulphites, so I kept away from white wine. I had a similar reaction the last time I drank beer (about 8 years ago). I took one sip, my face went beet red and I was sweating profusely. I'm guessing that sjogren's had started its evil work on me.... I do not drink any alcohol, anymore because I always have some kind of reaction, unfortunately.

Researching about sjogren's and foods to avoid, I've read that one must avoid caffeine and chocolate, alcohol, nuts and acidic foods because these cause problems with swallowing and dryness in the gut.It makes sense to me to avoid what hurts you, unfortunately there's not much left when you take out all the good stuff.

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