Fruit of death

[serenity151979]

I was sitting watching CSI last night, so it was sometime after 9pm, I was almost ready for bed except I hadn't changed into my pyjamas yet, and I was thinking about what to have for supper. Richard reminded me that there was some honeydew melon in the fridge if I wanted that. "Oooh, that'll do," I thought. I love melon, I don't eat it an awful lot but I do enjoy it, I last had it at Christmas when we went out for a meal. So I eat the melon, scoopy scoop, om nom nom etc. After five minutes I noticed my palms were a little bit itchy. I didn't think much of it. Then they got really itchy. Then the rest of my body started to itch, but not a normal itch, like I was covered from head to toe in scritchy little critters. I got up, stripped naked and checked myself for a rash, but there was nothing. "Odd." I thought. Then I started getting dressed again, and as I was doing so I said to Richard that my eyes felt funny. He got me back to the mirror and we saw that my eyes had started to swell, the inner corner of the left eye swelled quite badly, and the right eye was swelled almost shut. This was literally within 2 minutes of them started to feel odd. "Hospital!" he declared. So we sped to the hospital, on the way my throat started to feel strange and my face was burning hot and a fiery red. I can tell you, it was not an attractive look. We got to the hospital within 15 minutes.... then sat for an hour to see the triage nurse. Luckily I knew my tongue wasn't swelling and my airways felt OK so I was happy enough to sit. After seeing the triage nurse (who took my blood pressure, 149/89! I got it done at the GP's three weeks ago and it was 118/70) I sat for ANOTHER hour before even getting into a cubicle. Finally a doctor came to see me, she was a gorgeous little thing too, and she sounded me out, took all my details and told me I'd definitely had an allergic reaction but luckily it hadn't developed into anaphylaxis. She gave me some anti-histamines, a suggestion to avoid melons from now on, and sent me on my way. It was 1am before I got home, but already the swelling was going down and the itching was subsiding.

I just don't understand how I'm suddenly allergic to something I've eaten for most of my life and only had less than 5 months ago?