Chicken anecdote

Don't want to make this one super long, but it's something I want to get off my chest. This video popped up on my YouTube feed and after watching one video, I went and clicked on another one. In this video, it mentioned something about red meat being phased out, and it brought up the thought process of my issues with chicken, in particular.

Long story short, I think it was last summer, I went to Florida and at some point ate Chick-Fil-A. Now, I just want to clarify this; I loved that place at one point. I'd eat there two or three times a week. The sandwiches, nuggets, fries, shakes, loved all of it. I don't even know how to explain this... I'll start with the migraine thing. When I was 12, I went on this field trip through my middle school to this place in the Virginia Beach direction. Anyways, first day of the trip, it's night time and we start playing flashlight tag. As a kid, I was hyped, and usually you don't have incidents like this, so I'm not gonna blame the chaperones either. At one point, I'm running through this parking lot, it's pretty dark, and BOOM!, collided with my friend from my neighborhood. Turns out I suffered a concussion, which was horrible and I do not recommend it. Just for context, I also suffered a skull fracture from being dropped as an infant and supposedly had a concussion when I was 7 or so, though I often wonder if that was legit or not. Anyways, plenty of brain trauma for me at only 12, and it messed me up for a while. One of the consequences of the injury was migraines, which I started getting. This is where the food thing comes in. I had these migraines in let's say 7th grade, and eventually they started going away. One I remember vividly for some reason was during Algebra. I started feeling sick, had this star thing going on with my vision, and eventually went to the doctor. I vomited and it sucked, obviously...

Then, I want to say this was 10th grade, I had a basketball game on a Saturday. It was an away game at Madison, which is like 30 miles or whatever from Charlottesville. The game was at let's say 2, and we left at say 11. I got a seafood sub from Subway, which was right up the street from school, and ate that at the beginning of the trip, so that I wasn't hungry before/during the game. Long story short, I start feeling sick as we're approaching the school; sweats, a bit of that eye stuff, just generally not a good time. We get to the locker room and I'm hurting, stomach turning, nauseous, all that. So yeah, I vomit a couple times while the rest of the team's watching the girls' game, and clearly wasn't in a state to be playing. I mention that because like the algebra class one, that experience traumatized me and sticks with me even to this day. I also rarely ate Subway after that, and never ever thought of ordering the seafood sub. I bring this all up because something similar started for me with chicken. I have no idea when, but I can list off at least 5 separate cases. A few off the top of my head were visiting my sister and her husband once, that was when I was maybe 13. I had one visiting William and Mary; ate some KFC and was heaving all night, horrible times. Three as an adult, none of which went as far as vomiting, but were distinctly uncomfortable experiences, were a) going to NoVa for the day; I'd eaten chicken from Dairy Queen and started feeling sick, b) when I was coaching high school soccer, one of the games I started getting that feeling between games, I took ibuprofen, ate and hydrated and it eventually went away, and c) that time in Florida. I have another one from May of this year. I'd gone to my aunt's gravesite service in Maryland and ate chicken and waffles from this place I adore called Eggspectation. It was good when I was eating, but the next day was horrid. I didn't have the eye thing, but my stomach was destroyed. Ended up vomiting and all. That was the last time I ate chicken, and guess what, I haven't had that happen since. I did have a day where I was quite lethargic and felt like I'd been sick, but never actually had the eye thing and certainly never vomited. That one though I think was down to something else, which is for another day.

Point is, I wonder, and have done for a while, whether the food we eat is being tainted. Part of it I believe has to do with confirmation bias. At one point, I think the time I had the symptoms while coaching, I thought it was something vegan I'd eaten that made me sick, not the chicken I'd had the day or two prior. I'm not gonna sit here and say "omg this is a conspiracy", but let's be real, I've had way too many incidents like this, almost all involving chicken, and since I cut chicken altogether I haven't had it once. It could be that I somehow developed an allergy. Who knows. Or it could easily be something else. Like, I had Chick-Fil-a and Canes literally hundreds of times over the years, even crap like Cookout, Wendy's, McDonald's and rarely had issues. Do I miss chicken? Hell yeah. I also had an issue with pizza from certain places, and I simply don't eat there anymore.

It's honestly one of those things where if you don't think critically, or don't "have the time" to think beyond the scope of day-to-day life, you probably won't make connections like this. You also won't be able to verify any of it, which is disturbing to me. I'd like to know if I have indeed developed a chicken allergy, or if my food's been tampered with, or if it's a spiritual issue, or something just random.