As if an alien was crawling in my body

Yesterday morning I woke up with itchy elbows and hands. It looked as if I had some bites but they were not quite obvious yet. Huh, did we get a new species of winter mosquitos in the house?
Jan joked he had been biting me at night. He thought that was so funny. He should know notting is funny when I just wake up, and even less when I'm itchy.

My work lately is intense enough to give me lots of challenge and concentration but by the afternoon I had scratched my elbows enough after all to reveal them all red with clear whiter bumps on it as if they were massively bitten by a bug. My colleagues contested that these could be bites and I was going nuts. Itch itch itch ouch. While discussing itch, we all started scratching everywhere: our head, our ears & nose, ....

Some creme calmed it back for a couple of hours and in the evening I showed off to Jan my now clearly allergic reaction to some bites on my elbows. I just hoped that some creme would calm it off again for a while. I discovered that freckles were a way to test my suspicion that the rash was spreading.

But while watching a theatre play directed by my cousin, even the good plot couldn't keep my attention away anymore from my itching hands & wrists. Huh my wrists, did that mean that my rash had reached there already? As soon as the lights turned on again, that turned out to be true. My entire arm was now red & glowing as if the theatre spots had given them a good sunburn. "Oh yes I already noticed spots in your face too, now there's more"

Half an hour later I was showing new areas of inflated rash on my knees, belly, ... to the doctor on night duty. And the verdict is food allergy. Yeaaaaaay, it had already been 4 years since I obtained a new allergy so it was about time my body immune system discovered some new tricks. Nickle, grass & house mites clearly wasn't enough so now I must be allergic to some unknown food ingredient too. Joy oh joy.

Some antihistamine & cortisone pills later I entertained myself in the sofa by discovering constantly newly areas of itch & red rash and saw it spreading over my body in a worrying speed while Jan kept telling me not to scratch. He should know that's not funny late at night when I'm itchy. It felt as if an small alien bug had entered my body and was crawling around.

But all of a sudden it soothened and eased away. And I slept well and woke up with my old body. Phewwwww what a relief.

and now I have to figure out what the hell gave me this reaction. I've listed all the foods I've eaten in the last 2,5 days and there's nothing on that list that I have not eaten regularly before
: toast with choco or speculoospasta, sandwich with cheese/nuts/honey, self-made pitta, pasta, ...and cross my fingers the alien doesn't come back.

Comments

Korie said…
Scabies?
anno said…
Glad you've found some relief! Good luck finding the source... sounds like it might take some time.
Becca said…
Food allergies are so annoying because it's difficult to find out the problem, especially if you're not aware of eating anything new.

I have allergies too - mine have been quiet for a while, but you never know when a new one will pop up!

I hope you feel better and find the root cause of the itching :)
Betsy said…
Oh no! Sounds awful! I agree with Becca-- it's so annoying because it's hard to figure out what's causing the reaction! Hope you figure it out quickly, or better yet, that it was just a one-off thing and that it doesn't come back!

(PS: have you changed laundry detergent lately? My MIL had the exact same thing happen to her a couple of years ago and finally she realized that it was probably due to the fragrance in a new laundry detergent. Once she threw that out life went back to normal!)
Snooker said…
I'm with Betsy, laundry detergent was the first thing I thought of. After that I would consider lotions, shampoos and soaps.

Gosh, I'm sorry that you have so many allergies. Mine are all centered around my nose, dust mites, grasses, molds, etc. I can't even IMAGINE what it would be like to have an allergic reaction through the skin!

Isn't modern medicine wonderful? Take a pill and it's GONE!
Kat Mortensen said…
Nasty! I had an allergy to a medication that my dentist prescribed when I had root canal work done and I know that is not fun! Do you have "Benadryl" in Belgium? That's what I used and it helped. (I still have weird marks on my thighs from the rash and that was over a year ago. They are faint, don't worry.)

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