Soooooo I just found out last week that I’m allergic to a bunch of stuff. No, really. I have had asthma and allergies since I can remember, but I had never pinpointed my triggers to anything specific because I just never had the time.
So, about two weeks ago, my PCP (primary care physician, for those of you who don’t know what that stands for), made an appointment for me with an allergist in the area (who he coincidentally went to naval academy with, but that’s beside the point). He told me to prepare for an allergy and breathing test, so I, of course, googled what that meant.
Can someone say aaaack?
So, last week, I went in figuring that I’d get my arms pricked with a bunch of allergens and then only a few would show up, leaving me with just some slightly itching arms and a smile on my face.
Oh, how wrong I was.
After talking about what was going to happen, the nurse wrote the numbers 1 – 44 on my arms, plus an H and a C for positive and negative controls. Then, she injected 44 allergens up and down my arms. Of course, it wasn’t just a prick. She literally dragged the needle across my arm quickly to spread it out. 44 of those. 44. Then, she told me that I couldn’t itch. At all. So, when my arms started to turn bright red, I couldn’t do anything about it.
Some of the spots got so large that she had to come over and draw a line in pen to separate them.
Then, when she finally read the sizes of each, she remarked, “You’ve got something for everything!” (referring to the size of the red spots for each allergen).
And then, because I had a reaction to more than 17 allergens, I had to have a couple of allergens injected under the top layer of my skin with longer needles. And, of course, I had a reaction to that, too.
Out of 45 allergens I was tested for, I reacted for 44 of them. And now, I have to get weekly allergy shots to hopefully lessen the reaction to each of my allergens (all of them).
So, really, I’m allergic to everything.