Why am I itching???????

[ny biker]

This just started a little while ago. I was sitting on the couch, watching TV. Wearing a cotton short-sleeved shirt with a scoop neck. My neck started to itch, so I scratched. Itched more, scratched more. Etc. Next thing I know, it starts to itch in front of and below my armpits and on my back, under the edges of my bra.

So I took off the shirt and bra and of course started scratching all over (stupid, I know). Then I took a piece of wet paper towel and sponged off the whole area, which helped a bit. Now I'm in my cotton pjs, trying hard to not scratch and make it worse again.

The skin all around the base of my neck is all red, as is the skin where it was itching under the bra. There are no hives, welts, rash, or anything like that.

I just took a Claritin.

What could cause this kind of allergic reaction? The shirt is several years old, the bra is a couple of months old. I use 7th Generation laundry detergent, but that wouldn't be the problem since my other clothes didn't cause itching in other areas.

Could this be a reaction to something internal, like a food I've eaten recently? Or is it more likely contact dermatitis?

I've had mystery allergic skin issues before (hive-like welts on various parts of my body) as well as rashes whose origins I never identified. Plus of course the identifiable issues like poison ivy and certain brands of deodorant.

I did put lotion on this morning on this areas, but it was two different kinds: Eucerin face lotion with non-chemical sunblock on my chest and neck and Complex 15 lotion around my armpits where I sometimes have dry skin/chafing issues.

Ugh I want the Claritin to kick in now!!!!!

update: red skin is spreading from neck down to the tops of my shoulders and up my back.

[Zen]

These are the classic symptoms of leprosy.

OK, not really. It could be anything. Were you in contact with some type of plant, perhaps? Think.

[SpinSpinSugar]

Sounds exactly like a food allergy to me. I had a similar type of reaction all of a sudden one day to soy milk which I had been drinking daily for a whole year. It takes about 45-60 min to show up after the offending food has been consumed. Never had a food allergy before in my life before and it took a loooong time and several frustrating trips to the DR. (who never did diagnose it correctly) to figure out what it was. (btw benadryl or allergy meds didn't work.. it takes about 24 hours to work it's way out of your system.) In the mean time, it feels like you're wearing an old-fashioned wool turtleneck swimsuit. Good luck figuring out the culprit, and don't exclude anything even if you've eaten it before with no previous reaction.

SpinSpinSugar

[7rider]

Prickly heat?
It's been very hot and sticky recently.

[PamNY]

Have you taken antibiotics, or any drug? My antibiotic reactions behaved that way. Good luck. Itching is so miserable, especially in summer.

[ny biker]

The rash is still spreading. Is now on the tops/insides of my thighs, the patch on my back is bigger, and is on the tops/insides of my arms. I'm also finding a few small hives.

I did go out for lunch today to a place I haven't been before, and had a crab cake sandwich and fries. But that was about 6 hours before this started.

I've been in the a/c all day long so I don't think heat is a problem. No new drugs today.

I will check the hours of the urgent care center tomorrow in case I need a prescription. Hoping this is not the case!!

Thanks, everyone.

[rubywagon]

The crab for lunch is setting off bells in my head. Have you had any problems with shellfish in the past? Although, my husband never had problems with it, and the last time he ate shrimp he had the same problem. I hope you get feeling better. That is miserable.

[ny biker]

Hmmm, I'm just remembering that it was almost exactly 2 years ago when I had the mystery hives. They were on my knuckles, knees, tops of my feet, and all around my hips/thighs/butt. Maybe my elbows too, I don't remember. I wound up going to Urgent Care after a few days because it just kept getting worse. The doctor gave me an Rx for steriods which cleared it up, although she wasn't able to say what caused it.

At the time I thought maybe I was allergic to blueberries, which I put on my waffles with breakfast in the summer. But after that rash cleared up I was able to eat blueberries again with no problems. Anyway it's that time of year again and I've been buying and eating blueberries for the past couple of weeks. I wonder if there's something about late June/early July blueberries that I'm allergic to, like a certain pesticide or other chemical used in some regions but not others.

Or maybe not...

I'll probably never know. Anyway, I will not be eating any more blueberries for a while.

[ny biker]

The crab for lunch is setting off bells in my head. Have you had any problems with shellfish in the past? Although, my husband never had problems with it, and the last time he ate shrimp he had the same problem. I hope you get feeling better. That is miserable.

Good point. I love crabcakes and haven't had any problems before. Nor with other shellfish. But the thing about allergies is that there's always one or more exposures with no reaction.

I should start taking notes.

[KnottedYet]

How about a little call to your on-call or a stroll on down to the Urgent Care right about now?

It'd be kind of rough if your airways got involved in this rapidly spreading rash/reaction.

[withm]

and on your way pick up some Benadryl which will do a whole lot more for your hives than Claritan can ever hope to. I'd also call the doc. Now.

[ny biker]

Well the Claritin kicked in around 11 pm and the rash is almost gone. Now the Claritin is making me sleepy. (Everything makes me sleepy. A doctor once told me I'd never make it as a drug addict.)

I'm still not gonna eat any blueberries tomorrow. I guess it's time to find an allergist. The last time I went to an allergist was after the mystery hives, and she did some tests and told me I wasn't allergic to anything. I didn't like her. But I work with a guy who has all kinds of hayfever problems, so maybe he can recommend someone good (who accepts our insurance).

I never felt any signs of airway constriction. In fact to distract myself from the itching, I measured my sit bones earlier. I put my yoga mat on my dining room table (which has a marble top), folded the mat a few times, and sat on it while I played several rounds of a word game on my phone to kill time. That gave me good indentations that lasted long enough for me to measure. I came out with ~140 mm from outside to outside and ~120 center to center. Which means either the Bontrager measuring thing at the LBS is totally whack or I wasn't making good contact with my sit bones when I sat on it last weekend (it told me I wanted a 140 mm saddle).

BTW, this sounds very much like what happened, although it doesn't explain why the histamines went so crazy:

Dermatographia. The name of this condition literally means "write on the skin." When pressure is applied to the skin or the skin is scratched, raised lines appear on those areas due to histamine-based angioedema that leads to swelling beneath the skin.

I found it on mayoclinic.com:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hiv...SECTION=causes

So that's something for me to google to see if I can learn more. But I'll do that tomorrow.

Thanks everyone!

[sarahspins]

The rash is still spreading. Is now on the tops/insides of my thighs, the patch on my back is bigger, and is on the tops/insides of my arms. I'm also finding a few small hives.

This is how I react to certain food allergies.. strawberries and avocados are two big ones for me.. I'm already on a strong cocktail of allergy meds, but it doesn't do much to help the food stuff. I don't break out in a rash and hives immediately, but about an hour (and sometimes several hours) later.. sometimes it persists for several days, other times it's all over within a few hours.

This "type" of allergic reaction is quite a bit different than the stereotypical anaphylactic type... in most cases it's not life threatening, just very annoying.

My allergist's advice was "don't eat those if you don't want hives" but he didn't specifically advice me against it

I'd definitely suggest seeing an allergist.. even if their advice isn't much better than mine's was, at least they can do the testing to rule out the possibility of a life-threatening reaction.. and maybe give you better medication suggestions

[7rider]

I once got awful hives from fried clams. Never before and never since (but it was a long time before I'd eat clams again).
Perhaps a food reaction

[Crankin]

I get the same type of dermatographia reaction from just touching my skin a lot. Also, I can break out in hives from seemingly nothing. Doesn't happen very often, though.
Overall, though, I am a very allergic type person, despite the fact only a couple of specific things show up when I get tested. I developed a shellfish allergy in my mid thirties, after growing up eating tons of lobster and clams, shrimp. I can eat scallops, though. I also couldn't drink wine for about ten years (sulfites), but all of a sudden, that went away (I tested it one year at Passover, and when I didn't die from drinking the 4 cups of wine, I decided I was OK). The shellfish allergy is related to my allergy to IV contrast dye/iodine, which I found out about when I had a CT scan. I suspected I might had this, as my mom did, but they convinced me to have the dye. Within one minute my eyes swelled shut and I had a huge welt on my wrist.
I also am allergic to Thimerisol, the preservative that everyone thought caused autism... it used to be in contact lens solution and after like twelve years, my eyes started swelling up. Now, I can't get certain immunizations, because they have Thimerisol as a preservative.
Go to an allergist.