Fish Sticks and Green Jello

And no I don't mean that kick ass band from Sweden.

Yes that's right, I broke out in a mighty case of hives this week! I've had itchy skin conditions before in my life but not in many many years, so I figured I was having a rash or something. It started out as welts on my legs and by last night anything I rubbed or itched broke out in welts, including my forehead and all over my neck! This started slowly on Tuesday and escalated into welt hell by last night. Plus I'd been having some strange chest pains and by last night I was starting to lose my voice.

I saw an allergist this morning and he was able to narrow down what the problem with me was. Apparently if you recall from previous blog posts, all that respiratory illness that I had on/off three times in March never quite went away. He called it a case of not sufficiently being healed from my original illnesses. I was also previously on two different types of antibiotics which he said weren't taken long enough to kill off whatever this is that's out to get me. The hives and other ensuing problems were apparently my body's way of freaking out and letting me know, HELLO! I'm still sick! FIX ME PLEASE! So it wasn't something touching my skin causing the problem but the illness inside coming out. Lovely!

So my very nice doctor gave me a dose of Zyrtec, the new allergy med I'm going to be taking instead of Clarinex and he put me on a steroid called Prednasone for 9 days. He gave me my first dose this morning and let me tell you... within one hour every single hive all over my body, and there were a bunch, completely disappeared. Voila! Gone! Like they never existed. Yes prednasone has some bad side effects but man what a relief! No more itching, no more welts, I felt brand new! Yay! I'm on it for 9 days only though thank god. I have to watch out for side effects like being "bitchy", as my doc put it... oh the jokes I got about that from co-workers today.... or just being depressed for a couple of days. Right now I feel fine, as you do in the beginning, we'll see how the rest of the next week goes. If it gets bad he'll pull me off it right away.

I'm also now on a NEW antibiotic for two whole weeks this time to really kill whatever the heck it is that's gunning for me as well as Cortizone cream in case I itch and Acidophilus to combat any infections from too many antibiotics. Also while I was at the store I picked up a nice multi-vitamin. What the hell. Might as well take something else on top of it. OH... and I have to take a teaspoon of benadryl before bed each night, to help the allergies and to help me sleep since everything else I'm taking promotes insomnia. As if I'm not already an insomniac. It's like some kind of crazy drug store over here! Well I was always one to take some sort of medication so what else is new. It's not like I'll ever quite be pill free.

So on top of all this other junk I have to take I also have my normal meds to take such as Buspar, which is good for being mellow, Flonase spray, which is good for preventing allergy attacks and microgestrin, which is good for not having kids. I don't have to take Zoloft anymore and I haven't since last February or thereabouts. My doctor felt that I didn't need it anymore since I was down to such a small dose and he was right. I haven't felt down or bummed or super mad or OCD or anything since I got off of it. I feel really great actually, oh except I have HIVES! Damn youuuu hives! All I have to say is I'm super glad this happened this week and not next week when my birthday shindig is. How much would that have sucked? (Knock on Wood and all that mumbo jumbo)