on her first visit to Barbados in 1996 when she took a bite of the shellfood and ended up in hospital on the first night of her vacation.

Ms. Ford was travelling with some of her girlfriends to watch the cricket Test match between the West Indies and New Zealand when dinner at a restaurant almost turned to tragedy after she took a piece of shrimp from a friend's plate.

It was less than an hour later while dancing that Ms. Ford began itching, the same symptom she noticed when she began eating shrimp about a year previously.

She had eaten it before in Bermuda in small amounts without always getting a reaction but the incident in Barbados made her realise the danger of even a small bite.

"About a half hour to 45 minutes later I started itching real bad and I was going to go back to the hotel to get a shower after dancing,'' she explained.

"When I got in the car I told them I couldn't breathe and at that time we saw a Bermudian who was living in Barbados and he took us directly to the hospital.

By then my friends said I looked so different, I was so swollen, and my lungs had swelled up so much I could hardly breathe.'' Ms. Ford admitted the experience was frightening as nurses rushed to her aid.

"I remember the nurses coming and grabbing me because I looked so terrible,'' she explained.

"I remember I was in one room and was gasping for breath and they rushed me to another room where all these needles were stuck in me. They said if I had gone back to the hotel room I probably would not have made it.'' After spending the night in the hospital Ms. Ford was released the next day and was able to enjoy the rest of her vacation.

"I was on medication for about eight days,'' she recalls.

"I was fine after that, I just don't eat shellfood anymore.'' Warned Mrs. Jutta Harvey of the Allergy Clinic of Bermuda: "That kind of food allergy is considered `fixed' and if you have that you should never eat that food again.

"It's tempting fate to think `oh well, it's been a long time, let me just try a little bit'. Usually that allergy stays with you for life.

"It's not just shellfood, and I can't tell you what it is about these foods that causes the reaction. It's shellfish, fish, peanuts and other nuts, eggs and sometimes milk are frequent culprits.'' For two other women yeast is one of the products that has been eliminated from their products as they change their eating habits. They are forced to become something of an expert in knowing the associated names of ingredients in their foods that they cannot eat.

Carol Johnson is also allergic to all milk products, bananas, vinegar-based salad dressing, mayonnaise, kidney beans, red bean soup and sour creams and cream cheese which come under the category of moulds.

"All the things I really like, I just love bananas,'' she says with some regret.

"I have, for the past five years, been having allergy shots for moulds and dust mites and it was just in August that they discovered the food allergies.

They just take you off for a certain period of time, three months, six months, and then just gradually build you back up, like cereal with a little bit of milk to see if you can tolerate it.

"It comes in different forms. Cookies have whey powder which is milk powder and you have to know the different names that they associate with milk products because there are a lot of hidden ingredients.'' Mrs. Johnson admits she is feeling much better since she cut out those foods.

"Since I haven't had them in my diet I have felt so much better,'' she said.

"Before July when I realised there was something else the matter, I was sick the whole time, my eyes were watery and itching and I was sneezing. I knew it had to do with an allergy, but I wasn't sure just what it was and that's when they decided to do the food allergy (testing).

"As long as you take out the things you can't have you can pretty much eliminate the allergy problem.'' Allergies can prove fatal Brenda (not her real name) has had allergic rhinitis for years, first going to the Allergy Clinic in 1997 for puffy eyes, eczema and asthma. To add to all that she also suffers from food allergies which meant she also had to modify her diet, too.

"Mould is my worst one, when I got tested it went right off the scale,'' said Brenda.

"Even with different types of furniture it was much better to have vinyl or leather than the furry stuff because dust mites are all up in there.'' Brenda explained how eczema skipped a generation on her father's side of the family and she ended up with it. She also suffers from asthma.

"If your asthma is real bad, you'll find that when the eczema came out the asthma wouldn't be as strong,'' said Brenda. "They wouldn't be strong together.

"I've been investigating for years so I can help other people. The past couple of weeks have been rough, with itchy, watery eyes and mucus. It's definitely seasonal.

"As I got older the asthma laid low and the eczema came forward a bit. But that's pretty much because of my eating habits. I'm off sugar, no white flour.

My husband and I did this together for other reasons.'' She says even the natural sugar in fruit can be a bit much for her so she has also cut back on her fruit intake. She also doesn't eat any bread because of the yeast which doesn't agree with her.

"When you put sugar to yeast and warm water when you're going to make bread, that's exactly what happens to a person's body when they are allergic to it,'' said Brenda.

"Yeast is a form of mould so putting a loaf of bread in my stomach in a week is not good.'' She has been on shots for two-and-a-half years and is now down to one injection every other week.

"The first thing I noticed is that I could breathe through my nose,'' she says proudly.

"That was almost immediate. If you're stressed you'd be surprised how your allergies would flip out. I've never been so happy in my life and so in control of my allergies.''