measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hives and sniffles My allergies are kicking my ass. I almost managed to escape them this spring. I truly thought I was going to make it without getting slammed. I'd woken up all spring relatively congestion-free, with little sneezing. I wasn't coughing that badly. And only once in a while were my eyes getting scratchy or my nose twitchy enough to start sneezing. I even had the thought that perhaps my allergic reactions to spring pollen and dust were subsiding a bit and that maybe I was "growing out of them." Granted, I kinda grew into allergies. I never really had them, other than my dermatographia, until my junior year of college. Or at least they weren't severe enough to actually affect daily life. I was one of those babies who needed soy milk, and my mom said that in her experience being a nurse, soy babies tended to have more allergies later on. But I never really had them. Other than unsually puffy welts when I got scratches and scrapes from the usual reasons kids get them, things looked just fine. And the welts went away, and really didn't bother me, so my parents never worried about them. Remember-- I was a doctor's kid. They sent me to school with chicken pox, until the nurse at school called them and said I had to go home. (My dad was not one for illness excuses. It took a coup of his nurses in the office, along with my step-mother, to get him to finally go home from the office two years ago. They had to cancel his appointments without him knowing.) I remember going for my first allergy test when I was twelve. I'd been having outbreaks of hives that seemed to come out of nowhere, particularly on my cheeks and my chin. The doctor was very nice, explaining everything he needed to do to test, and what to expect. He used those four-prong pricking needles, covered in various chemicals from foods, pollen, etc. Every single prick puffed up into welts-- including the one to sterile water. No way was I allergic to all of these, I said. They never made me feel ill, and I never got hives from them. So he did the "unofficial" test that determined what I had-- he took one of those popsicle stick-like lozenges, broke it so he had a relatively sharp edge, and then traced it with little pressure down the entire length of each forearm. Within minutes, I had a puffy line right where he'd traced. Diagnosis? Dermatographia. The ability to write on the skin. I was a seventh grader at the time, and found endless possibilities for this newly discovered weirdness. People who pissed me off in class (and there were many, since I was the "curve thrower" for a lot of people's grades) would often be the victim of welt messages I'd write on my arm with a pen cap. By the time they'd contact a teacher about it, the message and all evidence was gone. It was my revenge for being picked on as the class geek. :) It was also pretty gross, but then again, I think gross behavior is one of the things that junior high life has as a requirement. Of course, it wasn't all fun and games, either. If I scratched a mosquito bite, I developed lines of welts that traced my fingernail scratches. And things like volleyball were out of the question. I'd be a walking hive. I shied away from most contact sports, and became used to calming other people's fears when they'd see these random glowing-white welts show up on my skin. Dermatographia was tolerable, and other than a few bouts of nasty outbreaks every year, I didn't mind it that much. I only took antihistamines (usually Seldane) when I had an unusually itchy outbreak, and otherwise just dealt with the hives in stride. To the point that sometimes I'd have them and not even notice them. I started developing sinus allergies during my first summer spent here in New England. Mold, dogwoods, and a plethora of pollen just killed me that year. But Seldane had recently been taken off the market due to people not watching drug interactions, and nothing else worked on the sniffles without making me zoned out or just completely groggy, so again... I dealt. My sinuses have reacted worse every year, usually to the point that I wake up in fits of sneezes in the morning for about three months out of the year. Most allergy meds just don't work. I need the antihistamine, but that means taking something that will zone me out. So when the sniffles and coughs were triggered last night by dust blowing around [erich]'s apartment, I really didn't think much of it. Just tried to deal. But they just haven't gone away. I'm still reacting to last night's bout, which kept me up most of the night sneezing and sniffling, despite taking some hefty meds. My throat's sore, my head's stuffed up. But I know it's not a cold, because of how localized it is. Not to mention the fact that I've been having small hive outbreaks on my arms all morning. And of course, it has to be on the day that I have three big meetings to attend, plus a million little things to do. I don't like being so below my normal level of productivity and try to fake my way through a day. *sigh* Is it 5 p.m. yet? 9:55 a.m. - 8 May 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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