The Human Blowfish

Tonight, honestly I have nothing to blog about. My mind is completely blank…or rather just focused on one thing.

Medication.

Let’s rewind a bit…to about 3 weeks ago. One day my legs started itching, then my arms, and soon I could see red whelps/splotches/hives pot up. It’s pretty safe to say that I began to freak out. My loving husband knows how I have a flare for the dramatic, and a border line hypochondriac. Ha! He told me that I probably just had bug bites, and since the itching/bites were on my mind, I was making them worse…i.e. spreading. In the spirit of trying to prove him wrong, I put all my attention to not scratching. Unfortunately I failed.

The next morning I woke and discovered new hives and the old ones gone. freaky! Thankfully, I also wasn’t contagious. Determined to make the best of it I went on about my day, itching the whole way through.

Suddenly a day turned into a week, and a week turned into two weeks. Every night, I went to bed thinking maybe I just had a virus that was working it’s way through my body, and in the morning it would be gone. Wrong. Sadly I’d wake up the next morning as the same red and white spotted lady I was the night before. What was the deal?

For two weeks I couldn’t let my life stop, and how do you tell people that you have an unexplained hives on your body. Yep, see I can even feel the grimacing looks right now as you read this.

What kind of nasty person gets hives?

Me.

So I struggled through my days, sometimes not able to use my hands because I had hives on them making my fingers, palms, and wrists swell, or my feet, ankles, and toes swell…to the point of immobility and pain. Seriously, these suckers were holding on, sucking the life out of me. At one point I was crying to Sam thinking this was how I was going to have to live the rest of my life. Seriously. (told you I have a flare for the dramatic.)

Cut to yesterday morning.

I woke up with a swollen eye, and huge lip.

I couldn’t move, see, and all that I desired was to sleep (which was proved to be impossible because if anything touched my body it was painful, then I began to feel itchy). My mom finally stepped in, came over with my sister, and demanded I go see the doctor. Yep, I was defeated by these suckers…so I raised my white flag and surrendered.

The doctor took one look at me and his eyes widened with a look of horror. Yes ladies and gentlemen, I was a sight for sore eyes.

After spending some time with the doctor he decided he didn’t know the cause. Great. Exactly what I wanted to hear. I was desperate for the answer, I needed some resolution. Though he had no concrete answers, he prescribed me a steroid pack and Benedryl. I was excited to see if this would help…because I had already used cremes, oatmeal baths, etc. and nothing worked. To my dismay, I was told that I had to wait to start the steroids until the next day, sad, but at least I had good ole’ Benedryl. Once I arrived home, I popped those like a druggy on detox.

Cut to me passed out on the couch. There was no fighting that stuff, it told me who was the boss. haha!

I slept for the rest of the day, and all through the night. When I woke up today, I assumed things would be looking better. No such luck. I had hives all over my forehead and the other side of my lip was swollen.

Then, I had the sensation that my throat was closing. I almost lost my mind, what was going on? Was I going to die from this mysterious case of hives. Oh snap! My family rushed over, Sam got off of work and I headed back to the doctor…hoping for some relief and answers.

My dad teased me and said I looked like Bart Simpson….oh geez! And he even joked about preparing himself in case I needed a tracheotomy. He was going to grab a pen and look up the procedure on youtube…because sadly, you can find pretty much anything on youtube. I would just hope that he would let it all download before beginning the procedure…just so he’s not in the middle of it and the video has to buffer. haha!

Leaving the doctor’s office I was certain of two things: first, I felt like a complete idiot for going back because the doc only saw a little swelling (feels like a lot to me!); and second, I was given a big bowl of nothing. I was told to go home and wait for the steroids to kick in. I kept thinking, let’s just hope I breathe long enough for that to happen!

Now tonight as I am typing about my horrific couple of weeks, all I have to say is…

Boy do I love me some drugs! 

I’m a little sleepy, loopy, and in a constant haze of the drugs, but I sure am fun to be around. Along with that, my face is looking somewhat normal. Hallelujah!

Let’s just pray I am on the up swing! I really need it to be.

So as far as tonight goes….medication…two thumbs up!