I'm just a little bit of an emotional wreck today, folks, so I'm sorry if I get a little weepy. (As if you'd actually notice if I was getting weepy!)

Yes, me and that man of mine love each other to pieces, regardless of any obstacles that might enter our paths.

I know it must be terribly difficult for him to have to see me laid up all of the time. I do work and contribute to the household, and it's not a physical job, but more of an emotionally draining job. I can't do anything when I come home. It's usually straight to bed. For some reason, when there's emotional stress, it seems to enhance the physical pain. This is where I think I could use some of those anti-depressants. I've been reading on here that they can be very helpful for pain.

At any rate, I try my best to do things to please my husband. Boy, talk about disappointing when I had the allergic reaction! I was actually looking forward to our night out. I thought it would do us both a lot of good.

We're coping and managing. And we're looking so forward to when he comes home next week. I sure do miss him when he leaves. It could be worse, the company could be sending him for three weeks instead of one.

I thought about the MSG in the seasoning. But do you know how much MSG we probably consume daily? Everything seems to contain it these days. But then things are accumulative, too. So who knows!

I wanted to ask some of you experts out there something. There was a GP that I went to see recently, as soon as my medical insurance kicked in. I personally thought the guy was a quack and will never return to him again. He wanted to be my allergist, gastroenterologist, and my rheumatologist!

Anyway, when I was describing my anaphylactic episodes, he questioned me about foods. Well, when this all began about 6 years ago, it was recurring for 4 months! Yes, 4 whole months. I was on high doses of prednisone, Zyrtec, and some sort of asthma medication in pill formation. I can't recall the names of everything they had me on. I had to carry an epi-pen as well, but I swear, even when faced with death, I couldn't bring myself to use that darn thing! The doctors, nurses, and EMT's all thought I was nuts. I can't blame them, but that thing scared the heck out of me. As if death shouldn't??? Well, that's why one of my physicians finally put me on the self-inject benadryl. I can actually guide the needle myself and not have to be so frightened by a thick needle that shoots out so ferociously. I don't have to rush to the hospital right after, like I would if I were to do the epi injection. A trip to the bed is all I need. It counteracts the reaction pretty quick, but I know all of my symptoms pretty darn well, so I know when to react.

Boy, all of those meds I was on and I had gotten the moon face, gained a ton of weight, had severe insomnia, had the shakes, and started to just plain freak out. I finally had to tell my doc to let me ween off of the prednisone because I was so darn loopy! The reactions were breaking through anyway.

Then the anaphylaxis started to taper. The episodes became far and few between. I kept food journals and documented everything I ingested. There was much speculation, but no one could give me any solid answers. Some said it could be hormonally induced. Some said it could be exercise induced. Some said it could have been stress induced! Anyway, nothing jived. Not one thing. Like I said, I'd been tested for everything under the sun.

Now back to the quack that I went to see. He basically said I hadn't done enough research to find out what I'm allergic to. See, he asked me this question and I thought it sort of odd. He said, "If you had an allergic reaction to strawberries, what do you think your chances of having another reaction the next time you ate strawberries would be?" I answered with 100%. He said I was incorrect and that it's actually a 30% chance of having another allergic reaction. So he's trying to sum it up and say that I may have multiple allergies and can't pinpoint them because they don't occur in every single time I ingest the same thing, or I could simply have one allergy and it's a hit or miss because of the 30% factor. Does this guy sound like he knows what he's talking about?

I mean, after all, I did have the food testing done on my back and nothing showed up in the testing. And just to test if it was actually food allergies, I would brave myself to eat the same exact menu as I had when the allergy occurred. Nothing ever resulted from the self-test. I performed many of these self-tests. I wanted to be absolutely certain it wasn't food.

I once proposed to my gastro that it might be from my liver not functioning right. I mean, I have Hep C and liver damage is already setting in. If your liver is not funtioning properly, one would think that it's not filtering out all of the harmful toxins properly, hence, your body releases the chemicals in your body called histimines. Oh, but this would be too simple a explanation, and once again my own theory is dismissed.

Well, I see I've expressed a lot that's on my mind, some of it probably needless, useless information, but I just needed to get it out of me.

So, any of you experts out there want to tackle this one with some of your wisdom or observations? I'm open to anything. Even any of you who have never experienced these sort of reactions, have a go at it. I welcome all input! Most of you are smarter than these here docs we deal with. LOL

Well, at any rate, thanks so much for listening. I know it was long and drawn out. Sorry!

HUGS to ALL!

lemongrass