The Bee Hive State

Yeesterday I learned I'm not only allergic to penicillin, but now sulfa antibiotics too! I started to itch yesterday afternoon, so I took a shower to see if it helped. It did a little, but shortly after dressing I saw a line of little red dots going up both arms and thought they were probably bug bites. My roommate came home and said the spots on my neck didn't look like bites, they looked like a rash, and at about 4:00 I started to see the dots getting bigger and joining each other to become huge red itchy blobs. I called the doctor and he said take benadryl and call back in the morning. About two hours later I was covered in them head to toe. I tried not to scratch, but by 8:30 I knew it was bad. I had hives on my scalp, my face, hands, the bottoms of my feet. There was no way I was going to be able to sleep, so I went to the ER (a few blocks away) I did the whole epi/prednisone/benadryl/pepcid thing (same old routine) and left hive-free. YAY!! I slept great, but unfortunately the hives are reappearing. I hope they leave again before I have to work in the preschool.

UPDATE: They came back during preschool, along with some breathing problems, so I went to the ER and had benadryl, steriod, and epi injections, everything cleared up, and I went home. Less than two hours later they were back, and more painful and extensive than ever. It was awful. I went back to the ER (roommate drove me, no way I could in that condition!) I got all checked in and was waiting for them to call (they're much faster when you can't breathe!) when I fell asleep. I checked myself out of the ER and went home to sleep. The next morning they weren't as bad, but not gone so I went to a regular doctor, got all checked out, blood tests and everything. He prescribed a different antihistamine (obviously the 50mg of benadryl every four hours weren't doing anything) and I felt much better, even though the hives didn't completely leave until the 18th.

UPDATE: Pictures (if you really want to see them, kinda gross,but...) are at the parental-appropriate blog (the one they know about, they don't know about this one, I'd feel a lot less free to express myself if I knew they were going to read it, or maybe I just like my parents not knowing every thing about me, sorry about the awkward phrasing) because they wanted to see and I didn't want them on the picture blog (eeeww!) Anyone curious enough look can go here.