A Tick Bite Led Katie Cahoj to Develop a Life-Threatening Allergy to Red Meat: 'I Was Afraid to Eat Anything'

Once rare, alpha-gal syndrome is threatening more lives as it spreads rapidly across the U.S., likely due to longer tick seasons caused by warmer weather

One woman's life was changed forever by a simple tick bite.

Katie Cahoj, an elementary school teacher from Pomona, Missouri, thought nothing of the small welt on her leg that appeared in July 2020. An avid hiker and kayaker, she spent hours outdoors and was accustomed to the usual insect bites.

But a few weeks later she started noticing odd symptoms. Her neck and shoulders felt tight. Her heartbeat was erratic. She had trouble breathing.

“I thought I was having anxiety issues,” Cahoj, 30, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. But her nurse practitioner suggested that the tick bite could have actually caused an allergy to meat.

"That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard," Cahoj remembers thinking. As the daughter of a cattle farmer, she wasn't about to give up meat. But she took the allergy test anyway.

Related: What You Need to Know About the New Tick-Borne Disease Emerging This Summer

While waiting for the results, she had another reaction, this time after a breakfast that included cheese and sausage. Her face tingled and she had heart palpitations and numbness on her right side. Her husband Wayne drove her to the ER, where she ended up in near-fatal anaphylactic shock.

The nurse was right: Cahoj had developed alpha-gal syndrome, an allergy that can be triggered by a tick that carries the sugar molecule alpha-gal in its saliva — a molecule found in most mammals.

“The spread of alpha-gal has been astronomical," says Dr. Scott Commins, an allergist and associate professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

In 2009, he says, only two dozen cases were identified. By 2018, alpha-gal had affected more than 34,000 people. And new, still-unpublished data shows that number nearly doubled by 2020. One reason for the increase, notes Commins, is warmer temperatures, which have led to a longer tick season.

Related: Connecticut Resident Dies from Rare Tick-Borne Virus — the Second U.S. Fatality This Year

Unfortunately, there is no cure for alpha-gal. Treatments may include antihistamines, steroids and epinephrine to manage symptoms. But people with the disease must avoid food triggers in the first place.

Even though Cahoj started to eliminate all red meat and dairy products from her diet, she still felt ill. That's when she realized how many products contain animal additives. “I had to read every single label,” she says. “I was afraid to eat anything."

She lost 30 lbs. in six months out of pure fear. “The only thing I felt safe eating was what I made,” she says, which was mostly raw vegetables and chicken.

Soon she tired of those meals and decided it was time to take a different approach to her condition. “I started experimenting with food and really cooking again," Cahoj says. She even self-published An Alpha Gal Cooks, a cookbook full of safe recipes for other people suffering from the disease.

After three years, she no longer lets the occasional tick bite stop her from exploring her passions or going to restaurants. She does it all — but always with her EpiPen on hand. “I still love gardening, hiking and kayaking,” she says. “It’s just how I live.”

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