![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Visit to the ER at 3 AM on Sunday
Jun. 4th, 2013 09:18 pmI woke up at 1:30 AM on Sunday and felt like my skin was on fire!!!!!
It was burning so bad and I started scratching, and then I noticed as I was running my fingers along my skin, my skin was red and swollen with large welts. I could feel giant welts all over my legs, my arms, my stomach, my back, my side, my chest, EVERYWHERE!!! I got out of bed and looked in the mirror and my skin was red with welts and hives all over and then I felt I had difficulty swallowing which meant my throat was closing up. I immediately took 2 Benadryl (100 mg) and my rescue inhaler, and put Calamine lotion all over my skin, then waited to see if it subsided. By 2:30 AM it wasn't any better and there was no way I could sleep, my skin was in so much pain. So I woke Brian and told him I needed to go to the ER, and he opened his eyes and said "OMG WTF!?!?!?" I guess I looked pretty bad. He got up and started to put his clothes on to drive me there and I told him not to, because then we had to wake Erika and it was 2:30 AM and as her mother I didn't want to "trouble" her.
I reassured Brian I would be fine driving to the hospital (20 minutes away) despite taking the Benadryl and when I got there, checked myself in under "hives and respiratory difficulties" -- the second part got me straight to the front of the queue and they admitted me immediately to triage and had my vitals checked even before they took down my insurance or credit card info. Blood pressure was 134/90 (very high for me) and heart rate was 92 bpm (also very high!) but pulsox said I was at 99% so still OK. They looked at my throat and said there was minor swelling but not too bad. They hooked me up to an IV with steroids and antihistamines and by 6 AM all signs of swelling was gone. They kept me an extra hour for observation until 7 AM then released me with meds to take for the week: Hydroxyzine HCl, Pepcid, and Medrol (Pak).
Somewhere around 6 AM when all the signs of swelling was gone and I was calm enough to breathe and not be in pain, so I reached over for my camera and snapped a photo of my exposed skin. It pretty much looked like this all over my arms, chest, face, stomach, back.. you get the idea. BTW, this looks great after the 3 hours of IV medication I received, and this was deemed good enough to be discharged within the hour. You can only imagine what I looked like at 2 AM.
It was burning so bad and I started scratching, and then I noticed as I was running my fingers along my skin, my skin was red and swollen with large welts. I could feel giant welts all over my legs, my arms, my stomach, my back, my side, my chest, EVERYWHERE!!! I got out of bed and looked in the mirror and my skin was red with welts and hives all over and then I felt I had difficulty swallowing which meant my throat was closing up. I immediately took 2 Benadryl (100 mg) and my rescue inhaler, and put Calamine lotion all over my skin, then waited to see if it subsided. By 2:30 AM it wasn't any better and there was no way I could sleep, my skin was in so much pain. So I woke Brian and told him I needed to go to the ER, and he opened his eyes and said "OMG WTF!?!?!?" I guess I looked pretty bad. He got up and started to put his clothes on to drive me there and I told him not to, because then we had to wake Erika and it was 2:30 AM and as her mother I didn't want to "trouble" her.
I reassured Brian I would be fine driving to the hospital (20 minutes away) despite taking the Benadryl and when I got there, checked myself in under "hives and respiratory difficulties" -- the second part got me straight to the front of the queue and they admitted me immediately to triage and had my vitals checked even before they took down my insurance or credit card info. Blood pressure was 134/90 (very high for me) and heart rate was 92 bpm (also very high!) but pulsox said I was at 99% so still OK. They looked at my throat and said there was minor swelling but not too bad. They hooked me up to an IV with steroids and antihistamines and by 6 AM all signs of swelling was gone. They kept me an extra hour for observation until 7 AM then released me with meds to take for the week: Hydroxyzine HCl, Pepcid, and Medrol (Pak).
Somewhere around 6 AM when all the signs of swelling was gone and I was calm enough to breathe and not be in pain, so I reached over for my camera and snapped a photo of my exposed skin. It pretty much looked like this all over my arms, chest, face, stomach, back.. you get the idea. BTW, this looks great after the 3 hours of IV medication I received, and this was deemed good enough to be discharged within the hour. You can only imagine what I looked like at 2 AM.
Emergency Room, Riverview Medical Hospital
Taken 6 AM, Sunday June 2, 2013
The ER doc said it was the classic signs of a full-blown allergic reaction. The admitting nurse, triage nurse, med student, and doctor (I think, in that order) each separately asked "so what did you eat?" as their first question, but I dont have any known severe food allergies. It's also doubtful it's food allergy since my last meal before the break-out began at 1:30 AM was more than 8 hours prior, and food allergies tend to show up more acutely.
So it's most likely an environmental allergy-- which brings it down to cats, dogs, mold, and dust mites (those are my primary 4), and most likely triggered by stress (which, I've been feeling very stressed as end-of-year approaches and I'm sleep deprived and suffering a migraine, etc). I didn't encounter any cats, I've lived with my dog for 9 years and didn't encounter any other dogs, I live in my house every day, and so I'm not quite sure what exactly triggered that episode.
Of course, as Brian and my friend Liza wryly pointed out, my Spring is never complete until I have a visit to the ER... Two years ago in April 2011 I ended up hospitalized for 4 days due to a severe case of pneumonia that required me to leave school in an ambulance after I collapsed with a 104 fever... At least this time I fared better!
