Allergies...?

Well, this has been an 'interesting' week indeed. And it's only half-way through.
The weekend was spent outdoors, enjoying the fresh air and beautiful spring weather. Sunday we went hiking up to the blockhouse above Rhodes Memorial and had a ball. But then things started falling apart...


Now this hasn't been the first time I've been up to the Blockhouse, but the first time I've actually come off second best. Sunday afternoon I started itching - I thought it was just the bugs that had been biting me, and it wasn't too bad so I ignored it.


Monday, no better but no worse either, fine, get one with my day. 


Well, early hours of Tuesday morning arrive and I scratch myself awake. No amount of wriggling or scratching makes any difference, save for making things worse. So I take a drive to the pharmacy for some anti-histamines and lotion to stop the itching - they send me straight to hospital! But this time it's going on 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, and I'm going out of my mind from the itching.


Okay, so I'm admitted to hospital, and get jabbed with needles left, right and centre. Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration - it was only left and right... Once in each bum-cheek and once in my left arm. That was to put the medicine in. Then they drew blood from my right arm to run tests to try to determine what had caused the allergic reaction.


Thankfully the medication kicked in fairly quickly, and my skin stopped crawling. It also practically knocked me out, right there in the emergency ward!!!


I was discharged a little after 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, with a doctor's note for work and a prescription for anti-histamines to take for the next few days. Needless to say I decided to take the doctor's advice and stay home that day (Tuesday) - it was nearly time to get up for work, and having had just about no sleep so far, I was completely and utterly exhausted! I set my alarm for a reasonable time to sms my boss to let him know that I would not be in that day, then off to dreamland at last...


Tuesday I spend pretty much most of the day sleeping off the medication, which still had me pretty drowsy. But by Tuesday night I was feeling pretty much myself again.


Today (Wednesday) I phoned the hospital to get the blood-test results, to find out what had caused such a severe allergic reaction. Strangely, everything came out 100% 'normal'! So that's one mystery still unsolved. I suspect it may be something to do with the spring-time fynbos out near Rhodes Mem - the last time I was in that area the fynbos had not started flowering yet, which is about the only 'unusual' thing I can figure that I've done since this weekend... I guess I'll just have to keep a close eye if I start itching again and try to figure out if any circumstances coincide with last weekend... Until them, I appear to be 100% cured!


But with tons of work to catch up on....