Blog/2024-07-13/Hives

Some time after eating prawn moilee this Wednesday, I started getting quite itchy. Well, strictly that's me fingering one food as the culprit.

The marks are obviously where I've scratched the itch at night

This is obviously terrible timing, considering Julie and I are having a wedding next week.

Before It Happened (Day 0)

It was a pretty normal day. The only unusual things were that I had leftovers at work (chicken and carrots, and shredded beef) which I don't do that often (because I have my smoothie).

When I came home for dinner, Julie'd made some lovely prawn moilee. She's great at it. It's very authentically South Indian and I've enjoyed it many a time. It was positively delicious. She'd also made some bitter-gourd chips in the air fryer. These are hella spicy and we usually make them slow fried in the cast iron but this was decent.

At the end of the whole thing I decided I wanted some mangoes. We had some kesar mangoes left over from when I hit the New India Bazaar the previous week and some champagne mangoes as well.

The kesar were ripe to over-ripe and delicious. I also had one of the riper champagne mangoes (a poor imitation of the real stuff). Around then is when I started feeling itchy.

I went up to finish up some stuff regarding the wedding and setting up my personal contacts management stuff but it got pretty bad around 2 AM. I did manage to fall asleep, though.

The Next Day (Day 1)

The next day was Julie's IVF implantation and I had to drive her there and back so I had to delay till after to take a Zyrtec® Cetirizine. It didn't have very much of an effect, to be honest, and I was still very itchy. Sad to say I wasn't strong enough to resist so there was a lot of scratching going on, which left these red marks all over my skin. This is apparently something called Dermatographic urticaria.

Day 2

The next day my parents arrived, and we gave Allegra® Fexofenadine a crack. Well, that didn't help either. I'd stayed away from the prawn moilee leftovers now. This was a massive disappointment since I love eating those leftovers with rice.

Apparently, while it's safe to have Benadryl® Diphenhydramine with it, they might not work well in concert. Well, no problem with isolation here, so I waited.

Today (Day 3)

That brings us to today, when I get to try diphenhydramine on this run for the first time. Before I got to using it, I decided to try out a technique I'd thought of to prevent the scratching. I call it Stimulus Overload. I recall when this happened once before years ago I used to get massively stimmed by being in a hot shower while feeling this.

Well, my theory was that I'll overdo the sensation and then I won't want to scratch it. Well, that actually worked for about two hours, transforming the itchy feeling to one of pins and needles. At this point I decided to take the diphenhydramine.

Julie and I drove Sagar to the airport and then over to Erica's place to feed her bunny and I managed to doze off there. When I woke up the itchiness was significantly lower. To the point where I didn't really feel that much of a desire to scratch myself. I still had the pins and needles feeling but not much of the itchiness.

Some 6 or so hours after I'd taken the pill most of the itchiness is gone (though the redness remains) and I still have some residual pins and needles.

Day 4

I woke up with a slight itch but with it mostly gone, but the biggest improvement was when I took Prednisone 20 mg prescribed to me. The sensation is almost completely gone. Now to see if this lasts. I still have the red marks, though.