the great swollen face speaks
Feb. 21st, 2003 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avadSo I woke up this morning with a completely swollen face. joy. It's been so long since I've had a food allergy, I guess I've been lucky. As a child I used to get them all the time. I was allergic to everything it seemed. Chocolate, shrimp, peanuts, strawberries, fur,dust, dander, smoke, potatoes, etc. I developed asthma and eczema, suffered from rashes,facial swelling, the works. My mother took away all my stuffed animals (WAAAH!) and I would get some little vanilla bunny for Easter, when everyone was gorging on the real choco-deal. As I got older my allergies became less severe and I slowly re-introduced those food items into my diet with no harmful effects. Yes, exposure to cats and dogs or smoke will get me after a while...so I just learned not to spend too long in those types of environments.
Then 2 days ago, B. brings home some sinfully yummy new potato chips..some new flavor of garlic and onion with enough seasoning to actually satisfy me (and that's a LOT of seasoning). And we munched and ooohed and sighed from the terrible yummyness. When I stopped eating them I felt a severe itching in my throat and thought uh-oh...could i be allergic? Had some water, it got better, I forgot about it.
Out I go to shovel snow. This is during the Blizzard. I am well- bundled and I feel pretty good so I keep going down the driveway, knowing if I don't shovel some now, I'll never be able to even start tomorrow because it'll be too high. So, heave-ho, away I go. Figured since I wasn't getting to the gym, this was exercise so it was ok to go full-force. B. tries calling me in (remember he had back surgery so that's why he can't shovel) and I say just a minute because I really want to finish. But just a minute later I get a sharp pain in my ear and I decide somethings not so right and I should go in. I'm a sweaty mess so I go to take a shower. Notice what looks like insect bites on my body. About 6 or 7 of them all in different places. odd. Yuck. I start to imagine that some god-knows-what was inside my clothes...? But there's one on my face, and a HUGE lump on my forehead at the hairline- what the hey? I'm not feeling so good. Paranoid thoughts of airborne chemical weapons assault my imagination. Jump in the shower to wash off creepycrawly feeling and anything from my hair. Ok, better. Or so I thought. But yesterday my face did seem a leeeeetle bit puffy and blotchy.
Now this morning there's no doubt. I'm fully swollen with litlle prickly rash and all. So I look into possible reasons and it looks like I overdid it on just about everything all together. Looking back on the past few day, I did it all. Started with those chips (heavy on the peanut oil)and to which I definitely sensed an allergic reaction, then I proceeded to ingest many more allergens: stuffing (with MSG), shrimp, clams (I made pasta with clams),chocolate muffin, next day shrimp (chinese food) AGAIN (so sue me I LOVE shrimp).And if that wasn't quite enough for my already sensitive system all at once, I wanted to dye my hair streak so I bought and wore LATEX GLOVES last night. (Now I know through research that latex gloves can cause this whole allergy just on their own-very severely)!.
So there you have it. Why my face is like a red puffy moon, why the rash on my arms and all that jazz.
All I want to know now is when it will GO AWAY! ergh.
B. is so sweet, I don't want him to even look at me..but he kisses and soothes and gets me benadryl and such. Thank goodness I don't have to leave the house. It was so much worse when I was a teenager whose complete self-esteem was crushed by a little event like this. I remember crying (which really helps puffiness oh yeah) that I had to go to school looking this way..mortified. I just have to give it some time now and not eat any more allergy-inducing foods for a while.
Then 2 days ago, B. brings home some sinfully yummy new potato chips..some new flavor of garlic and onion with enough seasoning to actually satisfy me (and that's a LOT of seasoning). And we munched and ooohed and sighed from the terrible yummyness. When I stopped eating them I felt a severe itching in my throat and thought uh-oh...could i be allergic? Had some water, it got better, I forgot about it.
Out I go to shovel snow. This is during the Blizzard. I am well- bundled and I feel pretty good so I keep going down the driveway, knowing if I don't shovel some now, I'll never be able to even start tomorrow because it'll be too high. So, heave-ho, away I go. Figured since I wasn't getting to the gym, this was exercise so it was ok to go full-force. B. tries calling me in (remember he had back surgery so that's why he can't shovel) and I say just a minute because I really want to finish. But just a minute later I get a sharp pain in my ear and I decide somethings not so right and I should go in. I'm a sweaty mess so I go to take a shower. Notice what looks like insect bites on my body. About 6 or 7 of them all in different places. odd. Yuck. I start to imagine that some god-knows-what was inside my clothes...? But there's one on my face, and a HUGE lump on my forehead at the hairline- what the hey? I'm not feeling so good. Paranoid thoughts of airborne chemical weapons assault my imagination. Jump in the shower to wash off creepycrawly feeling and anything from my hair. Ok, better. Or so I thought. But yesterday my face did seem a leeeeetle bit puffy and blotchy.
Now this morning there's no doubt. I'm fully swollen with litlle prickly rash and all. So I look into possible reasons and it looks like I overdid it on just about everything all together. Looking back on the past few day, I did it all. Started with those chips (heavy on the peanut oil)and to which I definitely sensed an allergic reaction, then I proceeded to ingest many more allergens: stuffing (with MSG), shrimp, clams (I made pasta with clams),chocolate muffin, next day shrimp (chinese food) AGAIN (so sue me I LOVE shrimp).And if that wasn't quite enough for my already sensitive system all at once, I wanted to dye my hair streak so I bought and wore LATEX GLOVES last night. (Now I know through research that latex gloves can cause this whole allergy just on their own-very severely)!.
So there you have it. Why my face is like a red puffy moon, why the rash on my arms and all that jazz.
All I want to know now is when it will GO AWAY! ergh.
B. is so sweet, I don't want him to even look at me..but he kisses and soothes and gets me benadryl and such. Thank goodness I don't have to leave the house. It was so much worse when I was a teenager whose complete self-esteem was crushed by a little event like this. I remember crying (which really helps puffiness oh yeah) that I had to go to school looking this way..mortified. I just have to give it some time now and not eat any more allergy-inducing foods for a while.
