I’m allergic to almost everything — I feel like an outcast

Almost anything Mia Silverman eats could be deadly — and she struggles to live a normal life as an “outcast.”

The 20-year-old has more than 50 allergies, and almost all of them can cause anaphylaxis, which requires her to carry an EpiPen at all times to ward off life-threatening reactions — which occurred almost weekly when she was a child.

“Straight out of the womb, I struggled to digest things like dairy, but when I was 2, my dad brought home cookies with nuts in them,” the college student from Boston recalled. “My throat immediately closed, my whole body was full of rashes and I was throwing up.”

Silverman’s sprawling list of allergies includes peanuts peanut oil; tree nuts and their oils, including almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts and macadamia; all seeds and their oils, aside from sunflower seeds, including chia seeds, flax seeds and sesame seeds; monosodium glutamate; eggs; butter; cream — and flavorings and colorings.

Silverman told Caters News, “It’s hard to eat what I want to eat. Sometimes, I’m kind of forced to eat healthy. So if I want Chinese food, I can’t have it because it has so much sesame in it. I tend to eat very whole foods like steak and pasta. As soon as I start eating processed foods, that’s where the problems start.”

Silverman is also allergic to all fish, as well as varieties of fruit and vegetables such as kiwi, watermelon, mango, apples, peaches, pears and cherries. Lentils, chickpeas, sulfates, latex and whey are also on the life-threatening list.

Some of the less common allergies she suffers from are chocolate, coffee, saffron, lupine, certain red food dyes, milk, cheese, tarragon, sumac, tahini, za’atar, eggplant, zucchini, annatto, carotene, red wine and paprika.

“It was so scary; when we got to the hospital, they ran some tests and found I had all these other allergies. From that point, I just kept developing more and more,” she added.

Silverman admitted that she often feels like an “outcast” since her allergies prevent her from going out to eat and socializing, especially since she can develop a new allergy at any moment.

“I really struggled in school and my mental health suffered. I faced a lot of bullying all the way to high school,” she said. “I’m better now, but when I was a kid, it was really difficult — always having the fear that anything I ate could potentially kill me.”

Her severe allergies as a child led to her feeling pushed aside, bullied and left out by kids at school, which took a toll on her mental health.

“When I was young, I sat at the peanut-free table and no one wanted to sit there with me, which really was difficult,” Silverman said. “Lots of kids would make fun of me and make jokes about sneaking nuts into my food to see what happens.”

She’s also struggled to live a “normal” life, having to deals with restaurants and supermarkets that don’t tend to her specific needs.

“My mom’s cooking options were limited when I was a kid, but she loves a challenge and she’s an excellent cook,” Silverman said. “She’s had to get food shipped to us, talk to the chef before we even go to a restaurant; there’s so much communication she’s had to do just to make sure I’m safe.”  

Silverman grew up feeling like an “outsider,” leaving her with anxiety and depression.

“Every time I went to a party, I’d have to take my own food and my own little cupcake, which sucks when you feel like you can’t participate in anything,” she admitted.

But it wasn’t just peers who made her feel left out — her family played a part as well.

“A lot of my family excludes me and they’ve been ignorant about it. I’ve had family that’s witnessed me experience anaphylaxis in a restaurant and go to hospital, but they’ve been convinced that what I went through was made up in my head,” she revealed.

Silverman has tried multiple medications, and she told Caters her doctors suspect she has an still-undiagnosed autoimmune condition.

“The shots they gave me did nothing to get rid of allergies, I just gained brand-new ones,” she said. “Every time I have to be shot with the EpiPen, it’s so painful and traumatizing. It’s not just a shoot of pain and it’s over — it affects me for the rest of the day and wipes me out to the point where I have to spend all day in bed.”

However, Silverman is doing everything she can to live a full life with her life-threatening list of allergies, trying to make the most of it.

“Now I work with an app called Fig. You put in your allergies, and it finds safe foods for you. It’s solved all my problems,” she said.

“It’s great that I get to be a public figure for allergy awareness, which is something I never had growing up. I’m thankful that I get to find the positive in something that has been a negative for a lot of my life.”