Winter woes!

As the winter season is now well underway, I'm finding myself exhausted, sniffy and migraine full. The past few years however, this has been common and the combination of University and work is not treating me too kindly.


Today was the 3rd day this week I found myself in bed unable to journey in to UQ for my tutes, and even my eyes so sensitive that it hurt to do much study at home. I'm currently squinting as I write this, tucked underneath a warm blanket on the lounge.


For me though, it's not just your regular head cold, it's something a little more intense that my Mother has had to deal with for a long time, but especially the past 4 years. Just this weekend I was in Coffs to visit her, and as we said our goodbyes and she could see the exhaustion in my face she said "take it easy". Now, while I assured her I was fine, 4 days later all I can think is my mother knows me better than I know myself.


My whole life I have had allergies, the biggest of all being dust. Yup, dust would set my hay-fever off like nothing else, having sneezing straight after one another reaching double digits, and occasionally hives would break out on my arms and chest. Then,when I was about 9 we found out I was allergic to bees, as my hand swelled up to the absolutely blistering size that my skin could physically stretch to, and continued along my arm until we raced to the 24hour clinic. Now the dust always triggered small skin irritations that a slob of Sorbolene could fix, but when I was about 10 years old, I began to get severe eczema that I suffered through until I was about 16 years old we finally figured out what things to avoid. I was always so embarrassed, wearing long socks to hide the rashes, wearing gloves in winter time to cover the flaky skin and when the eczema spread to my entire face when I was 13, leaving my skin scale-like and painful, I even refused to go to school for about a fortnight.


Now I have had my fair share of allergic reactions, and now at 19 going on 20, my skin loves me for the expensive shower creams, body lotions and even washing detergents I need to use (and my boyfriend doesn't mind their nice smells either) to keep it under control, but I am still struggling with me internally. This one is a bit more of a long story...and it isn't something I generally talk about.


In October 2008 when I was just turned 16 and about 2 weeks away from my School Certificate, I woke up at about 3AM choking. Once I sat up I felt pain in my chest, but my natural reaction was I must have swallowed air the wrong way. I went to get out of bed I stood on my feet, only to have them give way underneath me. I was in complete darkness as I had no lamp in my room and the light switch was a good 3 metres away. My feet felt like I had just stepped on needles and I went to touch them to see if I had mistakenly left a hair brush on the floor and the same sensation ran through my fingertips as they made contact with anything. Eventually after some strenuous effort, I stood up and walked on the sides of my feet to the bathroom to check what was wrong with my feet. But I was mortified.

An example of lip swelling in anaphylaxis from
http://www.science4u.info/ 

The hives I mentioned earlier were all over my body. I was entirely covered by a rash, and the skin was splintering where the pressure from clothes touched: my waistline, around my back where my bra sat and my whole feet from falling asleep with socks on. But that wasn't the scariest part. The reaction to the bee sting I described earlier - imagine that everywhere. My lips were literally 5 times bigger than normal, my ears were purple because the skin was stretched so far and I realised that I could hardly hear anything, and the little I could hear was muffled. I was in too much pain to panic, and slowly walked to my mother's bedroom to wake her up in order to get to the hospital.




Now, waking up at 3AM isn't the easiest thing to do and initially my mother's reaction was like my own, it took some time until she was fully awake to realise the extent of what has happened. I was in the middle of anaphylaxis, and judging by the fact we could physically see the size difference after about 5 minutes of the swelling particularly on my legs and my throat, we knew we had to move fast. We got to the hospital emergency room and luckily I got a bed straight away, they gave me the shot of adrenaline, put me on a drip and then induced sleep and I can't remember anything else until about 6 hours later when I woke up in the hospital emergency room to some breakfast and being told my Mum will be back soon.


While our family has a history of hospitals, this was the first time I was ever the patient in one, other than my birth. Let me tell you, waking up in an emergency ward, with a hazy memory of how you got there (of course this came back as the day progressed and I wasn't so groggy) in a lot of pain, a drip in your arm and being alone - it's not a good feeling. But Mum did come back and with orders to stay in bed until all swelling was down, to rest, to see my GP immediately and to get in touch with an allerginist, we were off home where I slept for almost a full 2 days.


Now the reaction alone is one of the scariest things I have ever experienced, and I couldn't help but think to myself for the next few weeks - what if I didn't wake up from myself choking? Or, what if something had happened so we couldn't get to the hospital right away? Answers which I should be thankful that I will never need to know the answer. But anaphylaxis is a lot more than the initial reaction.

An example of a skin allergy test I had to under go for
weeks on each arm after the incident.

A few weeks later, and many blood tests down the line I was told from my body being in such shock, I now had glandular fever. Not only that, but it did take some time before my allerginist could figure out what caused this reaction. Around the same time I had my reaction, a new study was being made with the connection to ticks and red-meat. Basically, the venom in a particular type of tick has very similar enzymes to that which is found in types of red meat - particularly beef. But the reactions are not immediate like other anaphylaxis. My Doctor described it to me as we digest food and some of it passes our system, but some days we may have more of that one thing in one day, and our body has more than usual to digest. It is these days that our body recognises it as a threat, and does not think it will simply pass. That is when the reaction happens. You can read more about it here and here.


As the weeks progressed, my Doctor explained to my mother and I that my immune system was not recovering well, and I was at a huge risk of my glandular fever becoming chronic fatigue. Our family had a member who suffered chronic fatigue for most of his adult life, and honestly, the whole time I can remember having known him. So this was not something we wanted to hear. My diet changed dramatically and conditions did improve, but even today, 4 years later, whenever I get the tiniest bug or virus my body slowly begins to shut down. A common cold that my partner might get over in 3 days can have lingering affects on me up to 1 month later. 


Thankfully, I am able to eat red meat again as just like my doctor predicted, the venom from the tick phased out, but even still I prefer eating chicken if I can get it!


Today I am sitting at home, just reminding everyone to be mindful this cold and flu season. While it may not matter to you, there are a lot of us (any many worse than me) that having a greater difficulty getting better. 

• Wash your hands when you can! You'd be amazed at how much bacteria can be spread just from the things you touch.
• Cough and sneeze into something, whether it is your elbow or a hanky.
• If it gets to a week and you're still feeling ill, visit your GP! Over the counter medications aren't good enough and you could be spreading a nasty virus.
• Rug up this winter and stay at of the rain when you can.
• Rest as much as you can!

If you can avoid getting sick at all this winter, consider yourself my new best friend!
Hopefully this time next week I'll be up and running again...