MINNEAPOLIS – Carl Pedersen kept getting sick, but he couldn’t figure out why.
Repeatedly, the Department of Natural Resources fisheries area supervisor who works out of Walker, Minn., would face seemingly random bouts of stomach flu. Sometimes, the queasiness arrived gradually as he drove home from work. And then, four years ago on New Year’s Eve, he woke up in the middle of the night to find his entire body covered with hives.
“I said to the wife, ‘I think I probably should go to the emergency room,’ ” Pedersen said. After a 45-minute car ride, he entered the hospital as he was going into anaphylactic shock. That was just the beginning of a yearlong path to a diagnosis…