#HotMess is my new name for Roo. I had been counting down the days for May 14 since this was the day for Roo's allergy testing. I had big hopes of finding out the source of her allergic reaction that landed her in the hospital last month. I had testing last Fall so I knew you have to be off antihistamines 72 hours prior to testing. So we prayed Roo wouldn't have any reactions, would get the testing, the source of all this chaos would be found and life would be good. Thursday morning, I high tailed it across town with my wet hair and lack of makeup for the early am testing to find Roo erupted in hives. Yes! Let's get the testing done and fill her up with some antihistamines...Yeah, that didn't happen. As we sat in the exam room waiting on the Doctor, the poor girl's lip started swelling...I did another high tail and fetched a doctor. We had nurses flying all over the place. I did a lot of praying for the insertion of the IV...and I opened my eyes just as blood came flying out all over the place...good news, it went in. More good news, I was sitting down. The IV was hung on a dry cleaning hanger and attached to a picture, the plastic tool box (literally, a tool box) with emergency supplies was fetched and set up in the room, epi pen, steroids, and something else were injected...proper epi pen use was given...questions regarding what was eaten and what drugs had recently been ingested, a quick test for peanuts and ibuprofen administered...neither one of those was the culprit. Although, it is believed the Motrin Roo took may have exacerbated the problem. I did not know NSAIDs can make an allergy trigger kick into a life threatening attack. (Lesson number one for the day) I, of course, was busy texting the husband to see if we could get Roo a new mattress, in case something nasty from the old apartment hitched a ride to the new apartment....
Lunch time rolled around and her doctor brought us some Steak Out that a drug rep had brought by to the Office. We were very grateful for the grilled chicken, baked potato, salad and iced tea. This leads me to lesson number two for the day...the Doctor was going to give us steak tips since that is her favorite but then thought better of it since red meat can cause anaphylactic reactions in some people. A recent discovery has connected tics that latch onto cattle can make the meat consumed to cause anaphylactic reactions during the night...so she gave us chicken. Who knew?
I asked if all this was caused by her keeping the cat for us, nope, lesson 3, these hives were caused by an internal source not external. Good, so there are still hopes for Roo to become a Crazy Cat Lady.
A second shot of epinephrine, some other drug, led us into spending most of the day in the Allergy Clinic. The good news is that we avoided another hospitalization but the bad news is, the source is still unknown.
Stay tuned for Monday when they are going to try to complete her testing while she is still on steroids. I read her Tweet this morning and she wrote the steroids had her buzzing and lots of unpacking was done...a sort of good news/bad news thing. Pray for Roo aka #HotMess,
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