In recent months I have wanted to be more proactive in taking care of my health. Unfortunately this has meant that I have more doctor appointments. One of the doctors I chose to see is an allergist.
Back when I was a teenager, my pediatrician told me I was allergic to Penicillins. I didn't give it much thought at the time. A few decades later I was put on Amoxicillin for a dental infection. I ended up with a full body rash and hives (while on a business trip in Europe) so I stopped taking it. I put penicillins on my medical record as an allergy.
Over the years, I have added more meds to the list. At my first chemo infusion, I reacted to the benadryl they gave me and was told to never take it again. Other meds have been added. But sometimes my doctors would ask me about them and question whether they were a true allergy or not.
In the past decade, I have found that sometimes while outside my nose starts running like a faucet. This annoys me to no end. So I decided I need to find out what I am allergic to and then figure out what I can take so that I can end the runny nose businesss. Yesterday I went to the allergist.
One of the things they first told me is that over time your body changes and what you might have been allergic to once you no longer are. They started by testing me for penicillins. While I didn't have a real allergic reaction I did feel my skin crawl and felt pretty crappy during the testing. We have no idea why that happened. But at the end of the day the allergist told me that she was taking penicillins off my list of allergies.
I will go back in a few months and get tested for environmental allergens and see if I am really still allergic to Benadryl.
In the meantime I wonder if my obsession with allergies is really hypochondria, paranoia or just my supposed 'new normal'.
