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January 9, 2007
lots and lots of needles
So, allergy testing? I'm not a big fan. I mean, I like knowing what exactly I'm allergic to, but I could do without the actual testing process. I was a little nervous going into it because I found out on Saturday that the testing was more than likely going to involve poking things into me (naively I'd thought they would just put patches of things on my skin and then I'd come back in a day or so to be checked for a reaction), but when the nurse got into the room she pointed to my eyebrow ring and said that if I could handle getting that done, the allergy tests would be nothing. Ha! The first round of testing didn't involve any needles at all, but it felt like the nurse was poking a freshly sharpened pencil in my back and twisting it. When that was done we had to wait 20 minutes to see what would react. My back was stinging from the poking and I was getting a migraine so Mike kept me distracted by talking about the tattoos I want to get. Before I knew it, the 20 minutes was up and the nurse was back in the room. After checking my back she brought me some ibuprofen (for my head) and cream (for my back), then went to talk to the doctor and came back with a tray of needles that Mike recommended I not look at until after she was done poking me. I took his advice and was happy I did - she gave me 19 shots so that tray looked a little bit scary. The nurse and doctor both said that the shots wouldn't hurt much at all, but after yesterday, I have to disagree. I don't care what they say - even if a shot is only going into the top part of the skin, it still hurts just as much as a regular shot. Mike held my hand while she gave me the shots in my arm and then she left the room again, this time for 15 minutes. When she came back she gave me more of the cream for my arm and popped in a video on dust mites for us to watch while we waited for the doctor to come back in.
According to the results, I'm sensitive to cockroaches (ick) and allergic to dust, mold, and cats. (I also learned that my allergy to cold has a name - cold urticaria - and that I need to be careful when jumping into cold water because sudden immersion means I could go into anaphylactic shock. Exciting!) People with dust mite allergies need to have special covers for comforters and pillows, wash everything in hot water, vacuum the bejeesus out of the carpet, and keep the surfaces clear of dust, which in turn means that I need to buy said special covers, run Pint-Size daily, switch from washing the sheets in cold water, and get rid of the clutter covering most of those surfaces. One of those is going to be much harder than the others - I'll let you figure out which.
Posted by oracle at January 9, 2007 6:48 AM in the fourth year