Saschathon: It felt like I was going to die

I'm not being melodramatic here...well, not as much as I could be considering what had happened to me last week Monday. It happened after my workout at the gym--I started to itch. A lot. How would I describe it? It was as though I rolled around in tall grass crawling with red ants and mosquitoes. I'm. Not. Lying. It was horrid and I thought that I was going to die. After a while, I was able to calm down. I figured it was from the communal workout mat that I used. It must have been infested with...*shiver* bed bugs. It went away when I showered but as I got ready for bed, it steadily crept up on me. Soon I was stretching harder than a flea-ridden dog. That bad. Promise.

I'd like to say that was the end of my itching episode but instead, it got impossibly worse. The next morning, I woke up scratching. To make a tortuously long story short, my legs, arms, back of hands and feet looked swollen because try were so red and puffy. Seychelle helped me buy cortisone, an anti-itch cream but the relief was really really really short...like 2 minutes short. So I resorted to using blocks of ice. I manage to get a doctor's appointment in and can you believe it?--by the time I got to my appointment, the bumps were almost all gone and I noticed that I was scratching too much. I took pictures of my legs at their worse with the intention of grossing you, my readers out but they helped me show my doctor how bad they were moments before I walked in to see her. Se diagnosed me with hives, saying that had they been bug bites, they would have still been there. She asked me a billion questions about what I ate, what my allergies were, any changes in my diet or routine....she finally gave up an made me get a blood test and told me to go home and take some Benadryl. I still don't know what that was all about but after taking the medication and continuing to ice my legs that day, I saved a life...my own. Like I said, I'm not being melodramatic here, I'm just saying...I coulda died. Seriously.