Blogging under the influence, or, how our medical life just keeps getting weirder

Friday night, just before I went to bed, my face started feeling intensely itchy. I looked in a mirror to find that I had several raised welts all over the left side of my face. Nice. I've had an itchy, dry face for a few weeks now. I've switched moisturizers and then switched back. I've upped the moisturizer. I've tried not to scratch. But when I started looking like Will Smith in that scene from "Hitch," I knew things were getting bad.

Saturday, I woke up covered from head to toe in hives. There were hives all over my face, neck, arms, and even on the palms of my hands. (You don't know what crazy-making is until you have hives on the palms of your hands!) So began the quest. Since the only Doctors we've seen since we've lived here have been for the small people that live in our house, it took quite a bit of calling to find out that our little community hospital has a walk in clinic on Saturdays. So, since I hadn't met my quota of Doctor appointments for the week, I left all three kids with my husband and hauled myself to the urgent care.

The Doc who saw me was nice, but told me that they often can't pinpoint a cause for hives. I have't changed anything- soap, shampoo, moisturizer, clothing. No new foods, bedding, detergent, fabric softener. No signs of a cold and no new pets. No weird travels. The only thing we can think of is that the nedicine that I take to control my intercranial hypertension was recently switched to a generic, and because the formulations are slightly different, I may be reacting to the new drug. That could potentially be very bad news, because the brand name drug costs over $100 a month with our insurance, and our insurance won't cover the brand name now that there's a generic. And I was so excited to find a generic...

I left the Doctor's office with a prescription for prednisone and instructions to drink lots of water and take some bendryl at night to help ease the itchies so I can sleep. I have no energy, tolerance or patience to research more "cruncy" ways to get rid of the blotchiness and insane itchiness all over my body. So I'm sitting here tonight, slightly doped up on Benadryl, trying not to scratch my face off, and hoping that something starts to help soon. Heaven knows, I can only handle one weird medical crisis at a time, and its just not my turn.