The Beginning

It all started when…

It was my nephews birthday. Like any summer birthday, it was celebrated with pool time, family, hot dogs and hamburgers, and cake. When the celebration ended, I made my way home, planning on having a typical night in. The next thing I know, I woke up in the middle of the night covered in what I thought were bug bites, frantically scratching myself. Needless to say, I was freaked out. The only thing I could think to do was take a shower in hopes of relieving the itch. It was confusing, but the most confusing part what the time I couldn’t account for because I had blacked out.

Fast forward a few weeks, only to replay the first incident. It was the Fourth of July, so again- pool time, family, hot dogs and hamburgers, only this time there were fireworks. Fireworks. That’s a good analogy to what felt like was going on inside my body. The hypersensitivity (which I now refer to as my “spidey sense”) left a burning, swollen, rash all over my body. I woke up the next morning, again, with no memory of the night before and the hangover-like symptoms that I couldn’t explain.

This went on for several months without warning or relief. By the time I was physically able to leave the house, any evidence of the reaction had disappeared and pictures didn’t do it justice. Finally, I began going to emergency rooms around town, but that wasn’t any help either. Nobody could tell me what was going on. I never did an allergy test because I wasn’t having symptoms of a typical allergy, and even if I had, it wouldn’t have come back as anything on a scratch test. After months, I was still at square one.

This nightmare was on repeat. My life had become unstable, fragile and frightening. Without understanding the why, I become paranoid about the when. I was terrorized by the notion that the next attack was right around the corner. Not IF but WHEN.

Does this sound familiar?