Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty I am Free (of Hives) at Last

Actually, I’ve been hive-free since Friday, when the swelling in my feet finally went down enough for me to put on my shoes, but I didn’t want to jinx anything by getting all triumphant. 

What a strange experience!  Still a mystery as to the why, though I’ve decided that it had to be a reaction to a virus.  I had new hives every day through Thursday, though I did notice that every successive breakout was less severe than the preceeding one, which indicated that whatever it was was tapering off.  At the time, though, I wasn’t sure if my intermittent use of antihistamines was simply suppressing the severity.  When I woke up with a few spots on the backs of my legs Thursday, after having skipped a bedtime dose of Benadryl, I got really pissed off.  I popped one of those 24-hour Zyrtecs, which may have suppressed any further eruptions, and the Thursday morning hives disappeared within 2 or 3 hours.  The only problem was, the Zyrtec made me feel like crap.  So I lay on the couch most of Thursday fuming and telling myself “I am DONE with this, the hives are NOT going to come back, I am NOT going to be taking any more antihistamines, I am NOT allergic to any medicine I took or food I ate, this is OVER now.” 

And so it seems to be.  Whether it’s because of a virus that has been successfully thrown off or an internal pep-talk, who knows?  I lean towards the virus theory – after going great guns with work on Friday I noticed yesterday that I was still tired and in need of some quality nap time on the couch.  And I pretty much felt like crap all week, but thanks to the itching and the antihistamines it was hard to define if any of the crap-feeling was coming from anything else, though I noticed on Friday that I just overall felt really good.  But certainly the internal pep-talks can’t hurt and they don’t cost anything and there’s the chance that they might help, so…why not?