When I hit the big four oh, I found that my body started to fall apart one piece at a time. My warranty had expired and there was No Extended Warranty available! This is the story of my struggle to keep it all together using spare parts and baling twine.
The hives returned yesterday. Actually they never really leave, but they become less bothersome. Yesterday they decided to hop into high gear. Bumps everwhere my clothing touched, bumps all over my back, bumps on my face, bumps on my arms, bumps on my chest. Bumpity bump bump they were popping out everywhere. Very uncomfortable. My eyes are very scratchy too.
Taking a large assortment of antihistimines hoping to make this better, but they aren't working. The itchiness is a little less, but truthfully just thinking about the hives writing this is creating itchy spots everywhere. It feels like they are in my ears, in my nose, and my throat.
Guess I will have to call the immunologist Dr. Calm Monday. I have waited more than a week to see if the higher dose of thyroid medication would help. They were better for a few days, probably some carry over from the prednison, but have been getting worse each day. The more I itch the worse they get....
Having a hard time sitting still this evening. Antihistimines (especially the older ones like vistaril and benedryl) can cause you to move erratically. They certainly do that to me - its an uncontrollable urge to move.
Hoping everyone had a great weekend. Adios Amigos as the Cisco Kid would say! The Cisco Kid and Pancho were my favorite TV vaqueros growing up. I'll bet they never got hives even in the strong desert sun.
Spent the day today taking a relative to a "Parkinson's Clinic". This is some clinic administrator's idea of how to market adjunct services to an already ill clientele. If you weren't ill before you got there, you would be ill and exhausted after you escaped. Got there at 8:00 in the morning and finally left at about 3:00 in the afternoon. According to my relative a lot of time back in the warren of offices there was spent waiting on the doctor to appear. They get you captive back in one of the little exam rooms and it becomes almost impossible to leave, and at a certain point you have so much time and effort invested in "sticking" it out to see the doctor you hate to just walk. The supposed advantage was getting to see a social worker and a physical therapist at the same time as seeing the doctor, except there weren't any physical therapists there. Augggghh!!!
My blood tests have come saying I am not taking enough thyroid hormone (synthroid). Since I have autoimmune thyroid disease and autoimmune hives, my hives are believed to be linked with thyroid dysfunction. More circulating thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) can mean more autoimmune activity, which in turns causes more hives....which may be why my hives have doubled since discontinuing the prednisone. My TSH should be in a range of .5 to 3, and it was an 11 - meaning my pituitary glad is working overtime trying to jump start my thyroid. I am to give try a week on the new dosage and if the hives don't get better, I'm to go back to the immunologist. Sigh. I have been on a stable dose for the last two years, I guess my body has decided to go into attack mode again. Why can't it attack something other than me??
I am itchy and grumpy and all of the seven dwarfs combined tonight. Sitting in a waiting room was hard on The Legs today and The Belly hasn't been a happy camper for over a week. I have hives bumped up all over me, my face is redder than normal, and I have the attention span of a gnat. I actually feel sick enough I don't even want to think about work, and work is my only escape from feeling sick!! Sigh again.
I am sooooo tired my thoughts are "echoing" in my head, ricocheting around my skull like a superball in a handball court. I have tiny little red hives all over my forehead, in my hair, on my back, and on my legs. I have even bigger hives on my stomach and my arms. The Headache is not happy with me (too much walking I fear) so I am going to take many antihistimines and try to go to sleep. Maybe I can sleep for years just like Sleeping Beauty. You really have to be sleep deprived to wish that a witch with a poison apple would drop by for a visit!
Woke up this morning feeling a little out of energy. I went to bed last night earlier than usual and was awake and stirring earlier than usual. There was quite the rainstorm going through the area, so I waited a little to start my commute to work. I thought maybe the lack of energy was due to the storm. The weather moving through the area had caused The Headache to poke and stab several times in the night. I had my daily 2 am jab to the temple to complement the other stabbing pains, but they all only lasted a few minutes so overall it was not too bad. Stopping the Klonopin brought The Headache back into the almost manageable range again, so I was correct in thinking it was the medication.
Went to work, had to have my heater on in my office because I was way too cold. Ate a fast food lunch which is an uncommon occurance since The Belly and I agree not to eat at work. Eating makes the continence issues or lack thereof more of a problem, so I try to limit food and drink during working hours. Didn't feel too well for most of the day, had taken zofran for nausea before lunch, and then was not feeling too hot after lunch - which I attributed to the amount of fat in my food : there was much more than the 5-6 grams of dietary fat I try to keep to with each meal, but it might have been the hives starting to act up.
I always have some hives somewhere on my body, have since 2007. They almost disappear some days but in the evening they are always worse. I've been diagnosed with autoimmune chronic urticaria so I'm allergic to myself more than anything else. Driving home I looked in the rear view mirror and noticed my forehead and face were getting bright red, and my ears and the inside of my nose were feeling mighty itchy. This is not a good sign for me. It means the hives are getting ready to pop out, the mast cells are gathering to degranulate, and I am going to have a miserable night trying to resist itching.
By the time I got home, I had gone from bright red all over to bright red hives. Some are raised, and some are just red blotches of mast cells just under the surface of the skin. I took a vistaryl tablet and waited to see if it would help. Nada. Nothing doing. Hives still popping, and now I can feel them behind my ears. Not good news either, because hives behind my ears and soon I have sticking out ears like Mr. Rumbold on "Are You Being Served?"
I have now taken 25 mg hydroxyzine (Atarax/vistaril), 50 mg diphenhydramine (benedryl), 25 mg promethazine (phenergan), and 5 mg montelukast [Singulair] but I'm still broken out and still getting new hives. They are not as large or as tightly grouped as they were so maybe this combo will slow things down. I have epipens but really don't want to use them unless it is totally necessary. The interior of my nose is a little swollen but I don't feel my vocal cords swelling so hoping I knocked the hives back enough that I won't need to use epinephrine. I feel like I'm starting to get hives on the bottoms of my feet which is not great either. I have ranitidine (zantac) which is an H2 blocker I can also take. Most of what I have taken have so far been H1 histamine blockers with the exception of Singulair which is a leukotriene inhibitor. Generally the H2 blockers don't help me too much.
Wondering if the fast food restaurant cross contaminated my food with fish or seafood products. I have to be extremely careful when eating out but most fast food places have good processes where either they warn you that cross contamination is possible or they just don't cross contaminate seafood/fish with other foods. The inital help from the medication is already wearing off, and it's only been about an hour since I took it. Gonna be a long itchy night at my house tonight! Trying very hard not to be whiney but I itch so badly. Waaaaah!
