Why am I itching???????

[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]

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.

[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.

[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