The Perfect Storm Part 1

The last week has been an interesting, scary, not fun experience for me. As some of you know, I have been in and out of the hospital. Here is the story:

Let me preface this by saying, I am 4 weeks postpartum. So who knows what role that has had in all of this. Our bodies are amazing, but something like creating and then delivering another human being can do strange things to it.

A couple of weeks ago, I got mastitis. I don't know why I am prone to this infection, but I have had it at least once (sometimes more) with each of my kids. I was happy that this time I caught it coming on early and nipped it in the bud, because the last time I had it with Little Man I was sick in bed for a week with a 103 fever and it totally kicked my butt. When I woke up with it this time, I called the doctor and they called me in an antibiotic that day. Let me also preface all this by saying I have never ever had any type of reaction to anything.

So I was suppose to be on the antibiotics (dicloxacill) for 10 days. On day 8 (Sunday the 5th), I woke up and was wiping down the kitchen table before breakfast and noticed what I thought were a few mosquito bites on the inside of my right arm. We had been out for the 4th of July the night before, so I didn't think anything of it. But as the day wore on, my "mosquito bites" started multiplying. I've never had hives before and so I was totally naive to what was going on. I seriously thought there was a bug following me around and biting me. I changed my clothes, my sheets, showered, all in trying to get whatever was biting me to stop. Duh! By the time JC and the boys got home from church, my arms were covered.

As I said, I have never had hives before, but from the little bit I knew, I thought they usually came and went within 24 hours. So I put some cortizone on them for the itching and didn't think much more about it. Monday morning I woke up and my arms, torso, chest, and the lower part of my face were covered. I was running a 101 - 102 fever. I called the doctor and told them what was happening, they told me to stop taking the medicine, start taking 50 mg of Benadryl around the clock, and that they were calling in another prescription since I hadn't finished the antibiotic round. They called in cephalexin, not in the penicillin family, but come to find out later, there is a 10 -20% crossover rate for people who are allergic to penicillins to also react with cephalasporins. I only took two of those and then didn't take anymore because the hives were getting worse.

And when I say worse, I mean that we are not talking about a few spots here and there. We're not even talking about spots anymore. They were like giant areas that were raised, red, burning hot, and extremely, painfully itchy. They started to spread to my legs and cover any remaining area of skin they hadn't already. I had hives on the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet. I took cold oatmeal baths, cold showers, wrapped my legs and arms in wet towels, used an entire bottle of calamine lotion in one day, all in the name of finding relief. This is on top of the Benadryl every 4 hours. There was no relief. I would wake up all during the night (in sopping wet towels) and run into the bathroom and jump into the shower just trying to get it to stop itching. It was miserable. For the sake of proving my point, I will show you a couple of pictures. Please ignore my fat, stretched-out postpartum belly.

On Tuesday morning I woke up and called the doctor bawling and emphasizing that I don't think they understood how bad it was. They had me come in and everyone at the doctor's office who saw me had that "HOLY CRAP!" look when they saw me. The nurse practicioner I saw said she had never seen such a bad reaction before. She prescribed a corticosteroid pack for 6 days and told me to keep taking the Benadryl and that I could take ibuprofen for the pain and inflammation. Come to find out, ibuprofen is an NSAID that can actually increase the effects of a drug reaction.

So I started the steroid pack. And it did relieve some of the hives from my torso. Or maybe they were just done by that point (since hives are migratory) and they had decided to move on. Either way, I had a glimmer of hope that it was going to work. Surely this would work. No one has massive hives for days and days, right? I want to interject here also that we talked to several different people associated with the medical field who had told us that it wouldn't really do any good to go to the ER because since I wasn't having difficulty breathing, all they would do there is give me an antihistamine shot, which was basically what I was already getting through the max Benadryl I was on around the clock. So we didn't think there was anything else we could do except wait it out.

That night was even worse than the nights before. My legs were attacked over and over again. I could literally see new patches welling up right before my eyes. What little skin wasn't covered in hives was purple. I remember at one point I was in the cold bath filled as high as it could go, crying, scratching the heck out of my legs with a freaking hairbrush and thinking that this was the dumbest possible way to die. I consider myself a pretty tough cookie with a high pain threshhold - it takes a lot to get me to complain - and that is the point I was at. I seriously thought I was going to die in a cold oatmeal bath wanting to rip my skin off.

Wednesday morning I woke up and the hives were all over my face and up into my scalp. My face, eyes, lips were swollen. We called the doctor again and they said to go to the ER. Finally! Thankfully, my mom had already decided to fly up to help out since I had been so sick. We texted her while she was at the airport to tell her we were going to the hospital. I walked in and they took me straight back. They hooked me up to IV steroids and antihistamines right away. I was there for about 4 hours before they admitted me to the hospital.

**Warning: extremely ugly picture below**:

By that afternoon, after being on the IVs continuously, I already had marked improvement and the itching was kept to a minimum. I still had my legs and arms wrapped in wet towels, but compared to how it had been, it was sweet relief. I stayed in the hospital all that day and night until Thursday night when they released me with 4 prescriptions (60 mg Prednisone for 3 weeks and 3 different antihistamines for a week) and the instructions to keep taking the Benadryl.

I came home happy to be over the worst of it, filled my prescriptions like a good girl, even charted what time I took each of my many doses of medicine. We thought things were going good until Friday night...

**To be continued**