Some women are sick of their husbands. A woman named Kristyn gets sick from her husband, Sean.
Not him exactly, just his seminal fluid, according to an episode of Sex Sent Me To The E.R. airing Saturday on TLC.
It wasn't always this way for the couple, whose last names and hometown are being kept confidential by the show's producers.
After their son's birth, Kristyn developed a ton of allergies and other health issues that stopped them from having intercourse for a year.
On Sean's birthday, Kristyn surprised her husband with sex and the couple got an even bigger surprise.
Done correctly, sex usually leads to a lot of heavy breathing, but Kristyn had a much more severe reaction. She mysteriously experienced severe swelling, burning sensations and had breathing difficulties so severe that she passed out on the way to the hospital.
Doctors suspected she might be allergic to Sean's cologne, but tests revealed another allergen -- his sperm.
"All I heard was that she could be allergic to her husband," he said on the show. "[I thought], 'Allergic to my husband how? You mean because he's too fine? Too good-looking and all that?"
Actually, no. Sometime during her pregnancy, Kristyn had developed seminal plasma hypersensitivity, a condition similar to a peanut allergy, but instead it's caused by contact with semen.
Dr. Carmela Yomtoubian, an emergency room physician at Loma Linda University Medical Center, said the condition is rare.
"During pregnancy, a woman's immune system is mildly suppressed in order to not reject the baby that is growing inside of her," she said. "During this time period, if the patient is exposed to some sort of new allergens, she can develop a hypersensitivity to that thing."
In rare cases, she says, that "thing" can be seminal fluid.
Emergency room doctors gave Kristyn an antihistamine to combat the swelling and burning, and an allergist later confirmed Sean's bodily fluids was the culprit.
Doctors said she can continue to have sex with her husband provided they use condoms.
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