Mystery Ailment

If my January theme was "blooming," my February theme is "mystery ailment." At the beginning of this month, I started having a lot of annoying symptoms like headaches, brain fog, joint pain, and shortness of breath.

I thought I was becoming allergic to nuts or possibly dairy, so I made an appointment with an allergist and replaced those foods with a bunch of weird-tasting alternatives.  Maybe they're an acquired taste.  If so, I haven't acquired it yet.

The only alternative food I actually liked was this soy yogurt.  It was delicious (probably because it had so much sugar in it), but I felt the same annoying symptoms after I ate it.  Was I allergic to soy too???

Nope!  The allergist tested me for reactions to 60 different foods, and I'm not allergic to any of them.  The good news is that I can go back to eating all of my favorite things.  The bad news is that I still don't know what is making me feel so lousy.  An autoimmune issue?  Or perhaps Long COVID?  Maybe I caught a mild case of it and just thought it was a cold (at this point, there's now way to know for sure).

This sign in the allergist's office said, "A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book."  Those things certainly wouldn't hurt, but I'm also going to visit my regular doctor to see what else might be going on.

UPDATE: The doctor ordered a bunch of blood tests a few days later, and they all showed that nothing was wrong with me.  By early March, the symptoms had largely subsided.  My best guess is that I got a mild case of COVID without realizing it, then had some Long COVID symptoms for a few weeks afterward.  Of course, I've also been making a real effort to get enough sleep, stress less, and exercise more.  Maybe the allergist's sign was right after all.