I'm itchy!

So, I thought I'd explained my previous hives experience but apparently not. That's what happens when you don't blog often enough.

On Tuesday, June 23rd I woke up with a crazy bad case of hives. I thought they were poison oak. (I'm not all that smart okay).

Let's back up a bit more. Two weekends prior to June 23rd I'd done some major clean up on the upper portion of my yard. We have a retaining wall which isn't easy to get up to and it collects leaves and has ivy running along the fence line, thanks to my backdoor neighbor Bill who has a small forest in his backyard. I was pulling and tugging at the ivy, gathering up the dead leaves with my forearms. I did in fact get a rash on my forearms that same day but it went away by night time. That night a bug the size of a Japanese horror film monster sucked or bit the heck out of my arm because I woke up with 4 (count them people!) four bug bites that itched like crazy. Throughout the week I put cortisone cream on them but not much helped.

We camped over the following weekend at Mt. Madonna, where I didn't really have too much of a problem with the bites other than the occasional itch. I also picked and broke open a couple of them.

Now we're at Monday June 22nd where I went to work like normal. For whatever reason Monday night the arm with the bites broke out in small red bumps. Being smart like I am (not) I thought, omg, those weren't bites, they must have been poison oak and I picked at them and the stuff oozed out and now I have poison oak all over my arm. I told you I'm smart (not).
Tuesday I called in sick. I was itchy and now I had bumps on both arms. Damn this poison oak is spreading fast!

By mid-day it's moved down to my legs where now I'm thinking it's not poison oak but something else. I was also MAJORLY ITCHY!!! It was awful. I call my dermatologist office claiming urgency so they squeeze me in.

I looked so bad that even the Dr. said "wow, I'm just itchy looking at you." She diagnosed me with hives and gave me a bunch of sample cortisone tubes. She also prescribed Prednisone steroid pills. I had to take it in succession like this: 6 pills for 3 days; 5 pills for 3 days; 4 pills for 3 days; 3 pills etc. down to 1 pill for 3 days. It took a week for the hives to go away but the itching did feel better after day two. I was told to take all the pills or the hives could come back. In all honestly I did not take the last two 1 day pills. I gained 5+ lbs during that time People, you are starving on Prednisone. I over ate and couldn't stop. I was starving. I had to get off that stuff as fast as possible so I only didn't take 2 pills. Could that really have screwed me up? I do not want to take Prednisone again.

Fast forward to this weekend when on Saturday I'm sitting in my backyard watching the hives slowly reappear on my arms. I checked often. By Sunday they're all over my legs too. Luckily they didn't itch but for some reason today they're really itchy. Yesterday I took Zyrtec but it made me sleepy so today I took another brand and it's not as good w/the itching.

I did call an allergist and have an appt on Friday this week to have an allergy panel of testing done to see what I'm allergic to, but for the test to be accurate I can't have antihistamines in my system for 3 days. 3 days of being itchy!!

So, that's where I'm at. All I can think of is my arms since they itch the most. My upper arms in fact. Please send non-itchy vibes my way. I really need them.