'Is this dying?'

Well, I've been meaning to get this particular memory of mine typed down on solid software but I just never got round to doing it, there are quite a few reasons as to why I didn't get round to doing it, the main reason is: because I'm too damn lazy.

This memory of mine starts way back from 2 summers ago when I had a rather bad allergic reaction to the not-so-dramatic food; sesame seeds, I found out when I got back home that it was actual an Anaphylactic shock and I must take extra care not to encounter seseme seeds again. It wasn't even the sesame seeds I ate but the oil processed from them that I ended up in-taking. I find it quite embarrassing, that one of my major weaknesses in this world is the very pathetic sesame seed.

Me, my dad, Miss. Short Fuse and Miss. Pain-in-the-Ass were in Egypt visiting our family and stuff, the days were very unstructured, we didn't know when we would wake up, sleep, or eat. It was an unpredictable time. Once we hadn't eaten till 11 o'clock at night (bear in mind we didn't eat breakfast either) and Dad had planned with a friend of his for us to spend an hour on a boat cruise with his family. So we left the boiling hot flat we were in at around 11 that night and went to eat dinner at a restaurant, I guess I must've known something would happen that night, when we entered the restaurant, there were four buckets of the deadly oil around the chef that stood just outside the restaurant that served passers by.

So despite warning the waiter several times of my allergy, I still managed to bite into a sandwich with the oil and I naturally gained a reaction consisting of an awful stingy sensation around my lips and mouth in addition to an unreachable itch at the back of my mouth. I told Dad what I was feeling and refused to eat anything else, I waited till the others had finished and we all left the restaurant to join the crowded stuffy streets of Cairo.

On our way walking towards the river bank, we stopped by at a McDonald's (funny how they're everywhere) and bought an ice-cream (even though I don't really count them as ice-cream but more some form of synthetic milk) to calm down my allergic reaction as I've always found that diary products especially milk helps to calm it down a bit. After eating the fake-ice-cream I did find myself pretty normal, I no longer had the awful stingy feeling in my mouth anymore, which must be a good thing.

Five minute later I could feel a hard pressure in my lip, I asked Miss. Short Fuse and Miss. Pain in the Ass if there was anything peculiar on my face, they probably had had enough of me and my stupid allergic reactions for the day so they both said there was nothing wrong with me, my worries were rejecting their declarations so I checked myself in my pocket hand mirror, and I was shocked to find a huge lump growing on the side of my lip near the corner of my mouth. The strange thing was; there was no stingy sensation at all, almost immediately after this realisation I felt a similar hard pressure around the corner of my eye, three minutes later and there was a huge lump of swelling around my right eye. Soon after that (we were still walking towards the river bank) I was hearing a buzzing in my ears and a general systemic feeling of unease and shaking took over me.

It doesn't matter what happens to you, its only when you start hearing things that you truly get worried. So for the fifth time that evening I approached my dad and earnestly asked him if we could head back, expressing very clearly that I was worried and scared of a sensation that was taking over me that I was really not comfortable with. He told me to calm down and not panic (I was close to that state) and that If I don't calm down things will only get worse. Looking back now, I shouldn't have gotten upset with this decision, it's better to stay calm, but I did honestly feel that the scale of my worries were just not being taken into consideration.

So we continued walking, five minutes after talking to my dad, my eyes and lips were completely swollen, my heartbeat had increased to such a rate that I could hear my pulse pounding like mad in my ears, the buzzing was getting louder, my breathing was getting tighter, I couldn't breath enough air into my lungs, it was not getting into my chest, there was not enough! The pressure in my head was unbearable, like an unlocatable obstruction somewhere in my head that pushing on all sides of my skull.

When I got to the point of wheezing I couldn't walk properly, my dad had to support me as I was just managing to drag my legs on the ground, with him supporting my weight I tilted my head back in order to open up my throat to the air we take so much for granted and gulped as many breaths into my impenetrable lungs as I could. The next opportunity we found to sit down (there are no traffic lights, benches or bins on the streets of Cairo) I took, and kept my head down instinctively (it is great that God created us to point our head down to get blood to our brain when feeling drowsy). After a few minutes I managed to catch my breath, I didn't want to move but my family were beckoning and encouraging me to carry on walking/semi dragging my feet.

1 minute after we resumed our walk, my entire body was shaking, I was gasping for breath like there was no tomorrow, my heart felt like it was crashing against my ribs and my pulse was pounding in every inch of me. Now this is the bit where I can't really remember what happened I was too dizzy and shaking to think clearly but I remember feeling like to throw up (just when you didn't think it could get worse), I remember mumbling that I needed to throw up and I was holding against the bars of some fence just hoping it would all stop. My dad just said 'throw up' and out of all the fuzzy things going through my head I find it quite funny that I thought 'How could I throw up in the middle of the street Dad!' Luckily I didn't throw up, but instead I sat down (my Dad was complying with every request I was making at this point, and we had thankfully stopped walking).

The only place to sit down was on the edge of the pavement, so I sat and held my head down, trying to catch my breath and stop gulping for air, and I remeber thinking 'Is this dying?' and I distinctly remember thinking how I'd rather die for this all to stop (you re not really thinking straight when you're in that situation).

I remember my dad sitting next to me and telling me not to put my head down, I am too used to doing what he says and I never argue back, that I just put my head back up.

I fainted.

I saw my mother in a vision I had, she was (and still is) beautiful and her smile just shone so brightly that it instantly mad me happy, her hair was flowing around her shoulders like it used to when I was a child, and she was in my grandmother's garden next to a flower bush and the sun shone on the vivid green leaves.

My eyes opened. The first thing I noticed was that I couldn't hear anything (two things that scare you is when you start hearing strange things and when you don't hear anything at all). But slowly the sound was buzzing back, like an out-tuned record turning back to normal. So when I could hear my dad (who's lap my head was resting on) I automatically said 'I can hear you Baba' as if to make sure that he understood my hearing was okay.

He gave me a hug and continued commanding Miss. Short Fuse (who was also next to me).. which was to take off my scarf!!!! I was too drowsy to do anything to stop them, and it did feel very tight around my throat, but almost as soon as they took it off I told them to put it back on , so they loosely put it back on my head so that most of my hair was covered.

I am eternally grateful to the stranger that donated his half bottle of warm water to me. It was the best form of human kindness that can ever be given, that water was like gold to me then. You see, when anything medical like this happens in Egypt, there is not a reliable ambulance system to help you (we take the NHS for granted) so there was just a little crowd of people asking if they could help me and my dad. Luckily I was only out for a minutes and my dad was with me the whole time, he called his friend (the one we were walking to meet up with) and he came with his car, I remember my dad shouting on the phone as if it was his friend's fault I was allergic to sesame seeds (I hope you can understand why I feel pathetic towards sesame seeds now).

Miss. Pain-in-the-Ass was crying, I don't know when she started, but she was definitely crying, there were a lot of messy emotions going on with her I'm sure: she never took my allergies seriously. But I hold no ill will or grudge with her, her tears are an obvious form of regret and love.

Five or 10 minutes later the car was there (a jeep that holds many childhood memories to me) and we all sat inside, two seconds later I was feeling wheezy again and asked to lie down, so they positioned themselves so that I could lie down on top of them. My dad had ran away for 2 minutes to buy some Ventolin from a nearby pharmacist (as I was stupid enough to carry a pocket mirror but not my inhalers with me) and I think I took 6 puffs of it, oh my goodness! You'd never understand the relief that it is to feel unconstrained and breath easily again! It is a beautiful thing!!!!

Soon we were back at the flat and the two girls gave me hugs, I looked at myself in the mirror and I was awful! My entire face and neck and ears had swollen so I looked like a tomato with slits for eyes (similar to Voldemort actually) the bridge of my nose disappeared too as it had all swollen up, so I did look like the Mediterranean version of Voldemort. Either way, I did not look like myself, I still didn't look like myself until the afternoon the next day.

I'll never forget how everyone was so tentative with me, especially my Dad, when me and the girls were alone, they both remarked heavily how panicked and worried my dad was while I was ill. That always makes me cry, even till now, because no matter how much you complain about your family and no matter how much they aggravate you and no matter how much you just want to get away from them, there is an irreplaceable attachment to them that may seem invisible, but it's there. I slept that night in peace.

Well, there it is. You know how to kill me, but please, shoot me instead.