My alcohol allergy was really deadly blood cancer

Turns out there are actually some things that a drink can’t fix.

One recent college graduate from England thought she had developed an allergy to drinking alcohol — but it turned out to be blood cancer.

Izzy Fletcher, 23, explained that she began to notice her body having strange reactions after she drank, first noticing the problem after having a glass of wine after work last March.

Fletcher, who is an events coordinator, claimed that she had to head home early as her head felt like it was “going to explode” and her chest began to grow tight. She even tried different kinds of alcohol to see if that would help her problem.

“I got one drink, I think it was a glass of wine or something. I started drinking it and had what started as a really splitting headache,” Fletcher told Kennedy News. “It was really odd.”

As the symptoms persisted, she began to wonder if she had an allergy, or if the ailment was “psychological,” as her boyfriend had thought. She eventually began to increase her alcohol intake on nights out, claiming that drinking more seemed to help the affliction go away.

But, after developing what she described as a “non-stop” cough, she went to the doctor to get some tests done. Her mysterious symptoms turned out to be Stage two Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“The doctor thought it was nothing to do with [the cough], and then when they realized it was Hodgkin’s lymphoma they found that it was linked to it,” Fletcher explained. “When they told me that, it was a relief. I wasn’t going crazy.”

Fletcher started chemotherapy treatment Feb. 6, which she will be receiving for six months. Despite her scary diagnosis, she has a positive outlook on it all, thanks to its high five-year survival rate of 80%, according to the American Cancer Society.

Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a type of cancer that affects your lymphatic system, according to the Mayo Clinic. When you have the disease, your white blood cells, which are called lymphocytes, grow “out of control,” which results in swollen lymph nodes in your body.

Since being diagnosed, Fletcher admitted that she’s struggled with anxiety.

“I have never struggled with anxiety in my life, but the anxiety I felt for those [few] weeks up until now has just been crazy,” she said.

Still, she’s urging people to get checked out by their doctors if they start having weird or unexplained symptoms pop up.

“The biggest thing I’ve learned from this is that if you are worried about something, just go and get it checked out,” she said.

When it comes to drinking, she’s still taking it “day by day” — even though she “loved” a good party before all of this happened.