I’m working on the taxes today. I hate it. I hate sorting receipts and adding things up and inputting them into appropriate columns. Bah.

So I’m taking a break to share something very sad with you. I figure this is timely, what with Easter coming up.

Over the past two months, I have developed a sensitivity to chocolate. The darker the chocolate is, the worse my reaction.

Yes, you read that right. I can no longer eat dark chocolate.

No, this is not an April Fool’s joke.

You have no idea how much this has upset me. Chocolate is my reward to myself for finishing a task, my encouragement for making it through part of the day or a project. Instead of being able to enjoy it, my tongue and hard palate burn. It’s no fun at all, I assure you. This has really depressed me, and it’s been one of the things I’ve been struggling with behind the scenes.

It’s not just one brand, either. I’ve experimented with various kinds from my stash. Same result every time. The higher the cocoa content, the worse it is. Chocolate chips in cookies, chocolatines, chocolate-covered butter cookies; they’re all culprits. Those double-the-cocoa cupcakes I made last week? Bad. But the regular chocolate cake I made earlier in the month was fine. Go figure.

The reaction I get from milk chocolate is almost non-existent, so I’ve nibbled what little I had of that with caution. So far, so good.

Then this morning I made myself a peanut butter sandwich, and fifteen minutes after I finished it my tongue and throat were prickling. It’s not an additives thing, either; we use natural peanut butter (as in, the ingredient list reads: “Peanuts, The End”). I suspect my body, slyly encouraged by spring and the general sap/growth thing that used to turn me into a mess as a child and teen, is now manifesting allergies to things it hasn’t previously needed to in a new and exciting way thanks to a ramped-up sensitivity level. Ten years ago the new symptom was random skin itch and contact dermatitis with pretty much everything, so I wouldn’t put it past my body to have developed a new symptom. I haven’t yet experimented with diphenhydramine hydrochloride (like Bendryl, one of the common food-sensitivity-friendly antihistamines) to see if it’s my body releasing histamine in an attempt to fight off what it perceives as an invading chemical of some kind. (Dear body, you know I love you, but really, dark chocolate? Is this some kind of amped-up immune system thing connected to the fibro? Do we need to talk about ongoing medication again?)

Sigh.

You know what this means, of course. It means I have to go shopping to replace all my dark chocolate with creamy good-quality milk chocolate. In small amounts, of course, in case I develop a more intense sensitivity to that as well. And yes, it also means I’ll be careful, and will speak to my doctor about it at my upcoming appointment.