When the cure is worse...

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I'm fortunate in that I don't have personal knowledge of what it's like to be physically beaten up. Very fortunate. However, I do know what it's like to feel like my own body has turned on me.

The first time I had a really severe allergic reaction to a drug was several years ago. My doctor did not believe it was an allergic reaction to a drug, but I always did, and still do.

This weekend, I had another allergic reaction that made my first one look like a prance in the park. I know that this is an allergic drug reaction because I know what I took, and also because I made Dereck Google it yesterday while I was dying in my bed.

This is so awful that I am not even going to try to describe it. I am feeling a little bit better today, but soooo tired. I slept well last night, but I don't know that I am going to make it today without more sleep. I wish someone could just put me into a coma until this is out of my system, but that would be kind of hard to explain to my boss.

Comments

  1. Art2misFebruary 1, 2010 at 10:26 AM

    Are you a "one-percenter" like I am? I have a doctor who regularly calls me "weird" and a "teaching patient". My response: "are you learning anything yet?" Unfortunately, no. So I'll be having fun exploratory surgery on Friday. He's betting me a six-pack of my favorite beer that I'm NOT having a reaction to the stitches he put in in August.

    Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JenFebruary 1, 2010 at 10:29 AM

    I hope that beer costs a LOT of money. :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousFebruary 2, 2010 at 1:31 AM

    Lidocaine shuts down my bone marrow. I've spent two six-week stints in isolation with no immune system as a result. Not wuite an allergy, but I can realte to what you say when your body suddenly seems not your own.

    ReplyDelete
  4. MissyFebruary 2, 2010 at 8:12 PM

    There is a recent book, originally titled "The Genotype Diet", now called "Change your Genetic Destiny" that was written by the guy (Dr. D'Adamo) who wrote the books often referred to as the "Blood Type Diet" or "Eat Right 4 Your Type".

    In "Change your Genetic Destiny" book, he outlines how about 10-15% of the population are, regardless of blood type, prone to all kinds of wacky drug interactions and have a tendency to get environmental toxins stuck in their system. It's due to something called "slow acetylation" of the liver (basically, the liver processes stuff really slow due to a deficient or lacking enzyme). So some people get allergic reactions to normal doses, others get really strong effects. For me, caffeine and sudafed keep me up for days. I get seizures from aspartame and MSG. My sister gets migraines.

    Tends to be more common in Rh negative individuals. Very common in the Middle East and Caucasians. Rare in Japanese (hence the term "unami" and love of MSG).

    Perhaps something like that is your problem?

    ReplyDelete
  5. StajeFebruary 3, 2010 at 7:08 AM

    I had a fab reaction to a very common antibiotic about 20 years that caused, yes, WATER ON THE BRAIN. Lucky me, I had to have a spinal tap to relieve the pressure! I'm also made hyper and awake by common pain killers like vicoden (quite apart from the nausea, because who doesn't want to be away for that?) and until recently I had very little noticeable reaction to caffeine.

    ReplyDelete

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