Fair Warning: 11 min read on serious coffee sensitivity and allergy symptoms based on a real life experience

I stayed away from coffee all my life, which is a little over 50 years, for a very specific reason. Even though I like the aroma and the taste, I don’t like the ‘aftertaste’, esp. in my innards. Everybody in my life drinks it. Some daily, some twice a day, some occasionally. I thought that since drinking coffee has become globally prevalent and is offered with a wide variety of flavours with milk and nut juices, perhaps, I should give it a try. Perhaps my few precious negative experiences weren’t as bad as I thought they were. Perhaps I may find my new favourite social drink. Or perhaps not.

My first coffee experience was somewhat sensory and rather unpleasant. My mom has always been a big coffee drinker. Strong Turkish coffee twice a day. Once in the morning, once at 2 pm. No exceptions. If exceptions, no bueno. For everybody. For years, mom used to buy a specific brand of dark roasted coffee beans that she grinded in the coffee grinder in the grocery store just by the exit. Once I was big enough to be trusted with money, which happened before I went to grade 1 and could read, it was me who bought her the coffee in a plastic bag and then grinded it right after I paid for it. I liked the smell at first but at times, it was too intense to my little nose. I never tasted it because ‘coffee was only for adults’. I lived in a time and place where children were mostly obedient and did as they were told. I certainly did.

My mom was a very fashionable modern young woman back then. She had several handbags of various colours that she wore interchangeably, depending on her outfit. My favourite was a red moon-shaped one with a big zipper and then deep warm yellow with a big ball closure. She also had a medium sized black leather tote bag that she wore often “because black goes with everything”.

Mom always made sure she had enough coffee for the weekend because all grocery stores were open only in the morning on Saturdays and all were closed on Sundays. We always cleaned the entire apartment on Saturdays so there was barely any time to go grocery shopping. Even if we did, the line was long and boring so we preferred not to.

Every woman knows that changing bags is a risky business when it comes to items that stay behind. Once my mom bought her coffee bag, grinded it at the store and put it in her black leather tote purse. Some days later after wearing the black purse and carrying it everywhere, I asked her for change to buy a scoop of strawberry ice cream on a Sunday afternoon. I was allowed to go into her purse with her permission, of course, and even count the coins in her wallet, which I loved doing. Still do. Anyway, after I opened the purse and reached for the valet to get a few coins, there was spilled grinded coffee everywhere – in the wallet, in the side pocket – and it smelled awful!

I have no idea why the coffee produced such an unpleasant and bitter odour after a few days in a purse. I assume it was because the beans were dark roasted. When mixed with coins, it turned into a local biohazard.

I got my ice cream that day. There was another thing I got – immense distaste for coffee. From that moment on, coffee equaled foul odor. You derive taste from odour so the coffee problem was solved for me for at least a decade.

When I was 20, I worked for TV news. Because I was the youngest in the team, some male colleagues shared a tip or two with me every now and then. (Women generally considered me a threat. Some were more open about it than others.) To build and maintain good relationships with the spokes persons of various institutions in my chosen niche, I was to visit them in the office, preferably early in the morning, and ‘just chat’ and gain information in the process.

I went to the Ministry of Finance and knocked on the door of the badly dressed dude who had the same relationship with small talk that I did. At first, we sat in silence. Then he offered me coffee because it was morning. To maintain our professional relationship I said ‘yes, please’. He made the Turkish coffee himself, which leads me to believe that he either had no idea how to make coffee or he never wanted me to come again. It was incredibly strong, smelled burnt and bitter and I hated every polite sip I managed to take. I instantly felt something was wrong. I wished I wouldn’t have been a well-mannered fool with acid-damaged digestive system.

Two hours later, my stomach felt like it was on fire. As if I had a crater of a golf hole dimensions in my abdominal area. I was shaking internally, couldn’t concentrate and I was practically useless for the rest of the day.

Everybody in TV news drank coffee so I had made a few feeble attempts to fit in but there was no use. A few years later, I met my husband who loves his latte every morning. When our girls neared legal adulthood, both started drinking coffee. One daily, the other occasionally just for the taste. Alright, I’ll give it another try.

I have never researched my coffee not-drinking problem. I thought it was psychosomatic or that just some of those 5 cups of coffees that I have drunk in my life were simply too strong.

We were on a road trip to the mountains. On our way back we stopped in Banff (, which is 435 kms from our city) to walk around the town for a bit and get something to eat. Initially, we wanted to go to a restaurant for a proper dinner. Then we thought that it would take too long, we would have to drive at night, come home late and spend about $200. So we went to a familiar deli, had a small bite and all of us had our second latte of the day.

I was wondering what could possibly go wrong. Me, not drinking coffee, now having two in the span of 6 hours. Interestingly enough, I felt nothing. I had no usual immediate burning sensation. I was fine. Yay! My coffee tolerance problem was behind me.

Well, at least that’s what I thought.

It was already dark outside. We were less than two hours from home when I started feeling very strange. At first, I couldn’t keep my eyes on the cars in front of us. Hmmm… I thought that it will be over soon. I started breathing deeply on purpose, hoping to get enough oxygen in my brain to be able to focus. Didn’t help. Then my legs and my hands started feeling cold from the inside. What was worse, my extremities acted as they pleased, not as I wanted them to. More deep breaths. Still no better.

I didn’t want to alarm my husband or my daughter. But there was no use. Soon I became very much aware of every inch of my esophagus. My heart was beating more intensively. And my throat felt like cold metal gates that were slowly closing! My speech became short, as I couldn’t use my jaw 100%. My mouth went instantly dry as if something sucked all the moisture out of it in one second. The worst thing was that I was behind the wheel driving home on a highway at 110 km per hour – because it was my turn to drive.

I was fine when my husband handed me the wheel but only after a few kilometers, all this started happening suddenly. I needed to stay calm for the sake of my loved ones and safely stop at the side of the highway. I knew my husband did not like the idea of stopping at the side of the highway in general, not to mention when it was dark. I told him I would have to stop. He knew something was going on but wasn’t aware of the depth of my troubles. Together with our daughter, they navigated me to the nearest exit where I stopped at the first safe opportunity and got out of the car.

The air was pleasantly chilly. My husband spread out the blanket that we always have in our car on the grass so I could sit down and breathe as deeply as I could. It took me a few long minutes to feel a tiny bit better. The biggest relief was that I didn’t have to drive. Although I felt super bad that my husband had to, again.

He kept asking me if I felt alright. I wished I could tell him yes. In truth, the fresh air may had helped me feel a sliver better so I said that we could continue with our journey home.

Two minutes in a car and everything came back – cold feet and hands, ‘closing’ throat, ‘freezing’ jaw, inability to see well, and my heart behaving as if it wanted to come home before us. I removed my bra because it felt like Elizabeth Swan’s corset. It offered me some psychological comfort but my physical symptoms weren’t improving. I measured my heart rate twice in a row. Above 100 each. That was way too fast for me. Almost twice as fast as normal. Was I to have a heart attack or something?

My husband decided to drive me to the nearest hospital, which was about 20 minute drive. That was just way too long for me to sustain inside the car. I needed fresh air! I knew he used all his mental power to concentrate on driving (on the highway!) while thinking what would happen to him and my daughter if they stayed alone. Forever. My daughter had already called 911.

To be honest, at one irregular-heartbeat-and-a-rather-high-heart-rate-with-limited-breathing moment I asked myself (or whoever was in charge of my life at the moment) if this was it. I felt only partially fulfilled because I had three unfinished books, two courses in final stages to be launched and the blog I had so many articles for. Ready to be published! Professionally, I felt like a fool! Why didn’t I write more? What would happen to all these unfinished lessons? Will my family members be able to cancel all my business subscriptions? They don’t know those 100,000 passwords because I don’t know them either.

The metal gates tightened in my throat and I started feeling nauseous. At that moment I simply accepted my fate and expressed general gratitude for everything I had been blessed with up until that silly point of my life, when a caffeine overdose would end i. I was thinking about my lovely daughters, my darling husband who has been nothing but kind to us all every day for decades. I felt profoundly guilty and immeasurably stupid for drinking that second cup, and regretful about not giving every day my all. But I was at peace. Well, almost. I wasn’t really ready to leave.

The operator located us first and then asked questions about my heart rate, symptoms, and age. As I was answering, the ambulance had already departed. She instructed us to stop at the side of the highway so that the ambulance will find us easily.
I went out again. At that point I was visibly shaking. I don’t know if it was because I was cold or because of the uprising in my innards and veins. I was looking into the dark, counting the headlights of the approaching cars, trying to will the blue and red lights to come and save me. From dying and overall embarrassment.

That bloody second cup!

The most confusing thing for me was the absence of imminence. On all those five or so occasions when I braved the waters and drank an espresso or a latte, the mild internal shaking came almost immediately. This time, it took hours to activate the adrenalin. Although late, it did come with a force of a tsunami!

The paramedics stopped in front of our car. I stood up, asked my daughter to take my wallet out my bag, and I walked to the ambulance (, which was already a good indicator that I would survive, after all) to face the results of my ignorance. My husband and my daughter stayed outside. I felt terrible because I knew how cold and worried they both must have been out there.
The paramedics took my vitals, talked to me very calmly, which helped a lot. They asked the usual questions about any medications (none), family history (none), and about my overall health (salmon, bison, intermittent fasting, and exercise). I had already told the operator about my sinning so they knew the villain might have been the coffee. My pulse was 120 beats per minute at some point during our conversation, which, allegedly, is still normal for a woman of my age. Interesting. My normal is about 56.

While the gentleman was doing most of the talking, the lady first went through my entire wallet in search of my health card. I told her where it was, so she could fill in the forms. My right hand and legs were still shaking but I was already feeling a bit better. At least mentally. I learned from them (and then later at home after I googled what had just happened to me) that some people are sensitive to coffee.

After about 15 minutes, they told me that my vitals were still normal. They didn’t want to dissuade me being taken to the hospital but they said that, all things considered, I was alright. They gave me something that looked like a thin strip of white plastic (just like the one you remove from a Band-Aid) to help me with the nausea, given we still had about a 90-minute drive ahead of us. Car ride certainly didn’t help with that. The white strip melted on my tongue in 2 seconds. I thanked and apologized to the paramedics for calling them while they could have been helping someone else whose needs were greater than mine. At the same time, I was quietly grateful that they did come and checked on me in the middle of the dark night on the highway when I wasn’t at my strongest point.

After I stepped out of the ambulance, my daughter, started crying. “I knew you wouldn’t die but I really really worried about your heart, mom.” We had a group hug, I calmed the little one down as much as I could, I apologized for causing troubles and stress and then we headed home. Both of them periodically checked on me all the way to Edmonton. We arrived past midnight, unloaded the cargo, everybody took a shower and all of us went on the internet on our respective devices to search for what symptoms I had to prevent it from happening ever again. Naturally, I couldn’t fall asleep until 4.30 am with too much caffeine still strolling up and down my veins.

Based on what I have learned, unsurprisingly, coffee sensitivity has symptoms similar to mine:
– jitteriness and unease
– headache (I didn’t have that)
– anxiety or nervousness
– elevated heartbeat
– irregular heart rate
– nausea
– cold sweats
– insomnia

Coffee sensitivity is, however, different from an allergy. When people are allergic to caffeine they can develop rush and have typical histamine related skin reactions such as:
– hives
– itchy skin
– difficulty breathing
– swelling of the throat and tongue
– anaphylaxis – in the worst-case scenario.

It seems like I had a charming combination of both. Hard to tell what’s worse but at least you know now, if you haven’t already, that some people really cannot, shouldn’t or simply don’t want to drink coffee. And they have their reasons.

We should have gone to that restaurant instead. A few days later, we received a bill for $250. That, my friends, was the most expensive coffee I have ever had. And hopefully will ever have.