September 21st 2023.
Mia Silverman is allergic to over 50 things and needs to take her EPI pen with her everywhere she goes. Her life-threatening allergies include nuts, seeds, dairy, fish, and multiple different types of fruit and vegetables, which has made it difficult to lead a normal life. She is at risk of a life-threatening reaction from even a small bite of chocolate or sip of coffee.
Growing up with these allergies, Mia has faced a lot of bullying all the way to high school. She felt like an outcast and it left her with lasting anxiety and depression. Mia said: "I really struggled in school and my mental health suffered. I faced a lot of bullying all the way to high school. 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. 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."
Mia was born with dangerous allergies, but has gone on to develop more as the years have gone by. She said: "Straight out of the womb, I struggled to digest things like dairy, but when I was two, my dad brought home cookies with nuts in them. My throat immediately closed, my whole body was full of rashes, and I was throwing up. Every time I have to be shot with the EpiPen, it's so painful and traumatising. 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."
At one point when she was younger, Mia outgrew her allergies to gluten and soy. But worryingly, her allergy to dairy went away only to return two years ago. She said: "I've tried all sorts of medication, and my doctor thinks I have an autoimmune condition, which they're still trying to diagnose. The shots they gave me did nothing to get rid of allergies, I just gained brand-new ones. Every time I have to be shot with the EpiPen, it's so painful and traumatising. 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."
Mia has to be very careful about what she eats. She said: "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."
Mia's mum has gone to great lengths to make sure she is safe. She said: "My mum's cooking options were limited when I was a kid, but she loves a challenge and she's an excellent cook. She's had to get food shipped to us, and 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. 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. 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."
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