She wasn’t always like this, though.
“As you age, your body changes too. I used to be able to consume milk but now I can’t. It gives me the runs. And I’ve never reacted well to mushrooms like portobello, but recently (it’s gotten worse). I get hives when I eat mushrooms and it will be very itchy. I am allergic to it,” Ann revealed.
But the most severe, she says, is her intolerance to MSG.
And how she found out could not be more dramatic.
“My friend took me to try this bak kut teh in 2006. The soup was very yummy, so I just kept drinking it. I had around three bowls of it,” Ann recounted to 8days.sg.
“After around 30 minutes, I turned pale and broke out in cold sweat. My entire body went numb, and I curled up like a prawn. I could not walk, so I told my friend to send me home.”
Ann didn’t go to the hospital ‘cause she felt her family could take care of her, but they were already asleep when she got home.
“When I hit the bed, I passed out. I don’t know if I fainted or fell asleep,” she said.
“I am very thankful I managed to wake up the next morning. There was a lot of MSG in that soup,” she added.
“The next day, my friend told me he consulted a friend who is a GP, and the doctor said in such situations, if I don’t go to hospital, there’s a possibility that I could have died. It’s that serious.”