H&P

H&P: history and physical, for those of you not involved in the medical field. How we got started down this road...

It was early October and Mom was in town visiting, so we out to a restaurant that I wouldn't go to by myself and a good one to impress her. It was delicious food, but I felt vaguely nauseated all night and on into the next morning. I took some Phenergan I had from a previous illness and felt much better. I saw Mom off after doing a short little tour of the town, and fell asleep. I thought that was that but through the next week the fatigue continued. The headaches and just feeling run down kept on, but it was a bone-deep fatigue that was too annoying...but then it went away. And then it came back about a week later, and I couldn't take it any longer. I went to the doctor. You see, this was the third time I'd be going to the doctor knowing they'd want to write me off as mono. Third time's the charm though, you see...I did get an EBV titer, a very specific test for the virus that causes mono because they didn't want to run another monospot. I also got other bloodwork to check me for hypothyroidism and anemia, other common causes of fatigue and some of the other general symptoms I had. Allergies were considered, and I got put on an intranasal steroid. I went back a week later for my results.....everything was negative! I've never even been exposed to mono! (Most everyone has) Further workup!

I went to see my PCP while I was home over Thanksgiving, and got an official diagnosis of insomnia, which was and still is a component of the fatigue, but the bone-deep fatigue that I'm talking about isn't just i-didn't-get-a-good-night's-sleep kind of fatigue. Once again, allergies were suggested and I got an appointment with an allergist over Christmas break.

Onward to then...we talked through my symptoms and he decided to scratch test me so we could identify particular allergens.

 Looks like fun right?! The left shoulder is foods and the right shoulder is environmentals. This is the start of the scratch testing, so those are normal reactions. You need a wheal and flare for a positive response, meaning you need a 'bubble' to form and a red reaction around it.

 The "angry" one labeled H is histamine, the positive control. It's there to make sure I have a normal immune system, but that's the kind of reaction you need. Wheal and flare most definitely...as it what's going on up on the shoulder. The rest of them are not really positive. Some of them were if they were measured, but those a good example.

The thing about scratch testing is that if you're positive, you're really allergic. And you're done with testing there and you'll probably get desensitization therapy at that point, or 'allergy shots.' If not...you get intradermal testing.

 All these vials were things I did not react to on scratch testing so I had to progress to higher concentrations and intradermal testing. The flipped over bottles are things I did react to so I didn't need further injections.

 Joyous fun right?

Blood and everything (they most definitely hit my radial artery AND nerve...I was permitted to curse once they cleared out the kid in another room!), and here once again we see the wheal and flare. This is foods, and my other arm was environmentals. There's a checklist and once I got all the injections you wait fifteen minutes for the reaction.

So this was a long appointment, and as I continued to get shot up with allergens, I faded big time. Like I said, I had fatigue and headache as symptoms. Not much to go on, but I was a believer that it was allergies after getting injected with all of them reproduced the symptoms. The doc thought I was hilarious because I was so foggy when he talked to me after all the testing.

I left that day with a plan to eliminate all the foods from my diet and see if that corrected the problem. If not, other steps would be undertaken but for now that's what the plan was.

Great plan right. Except you've seen the list--how many things have yeast in them? Or eggs, oats, rice, onward down the list. I came back home and cleaned out my pantry--I was left with fourteen things in toto that I could eat. That when down later when I read some of the boxes and I had to add eggs to them. I had more food I couldn't eat, and while my friends were grateful for the food, it hit home. I had a radical lifestyle change to undertake.

And that's how we got to this point...I did the elimination diet and felt loads better. It was much easier to function at the high level I had gotten used to. It took awhile for some of the wheals/flare to fade (cinnamon hung around for about two weeks), but we had an answer. And a solution.

I had to eliminate beef and chicken from my diet, so I decided to go all out vegetarian. No yeast meant no bread (and lots of other things--salad dressing even, with some brands). I had to rethink what I would eat for lunch since that would mean no sandwiches...and on and on.