I went to the office and the nurse asked me a BAZILLION questions. Seriously it felt like it would never end. Everything I'm allergic to, how I react and to what extent, how long the reactions last and what I do for the reaction. Along with other conditions, meds., surgeries. Basically she's my new BFF. She charted it all and then I saw the doc.
Dr. F is awesome! He ran through everything in a little more detail than the nurse along with more stuff I don't even remember (I think I was in the office for a total of two hours). He told me he was going to do two tests; a skin test to tell exactly WHAT and HOW allergic I am to certain things and a breathing test to check my Asthma to see if I even qualify for allergy shots--
WAIT!
HOLD UP!
WHAT?
ALLERGY SHOTS!?!?
But I remain calm and do the breathing test first. It involves breathing in super fast then breathing out for 6 seconds as hard a you can and finally taking another big breath in. I did it three times and became very light headed. And I only did it three times because apparently I did learn circular breathing while playing the trombone and I kept messing up the graph on the machine. I took some Ventolin and did it again and he said all was good.
Next was the skin test. The nurse rubbed my forearms down with alcohol then put four rows of 12 little marks with a pen down the sides. She then put little drops of allergens all down next to the pen lines according to her chart. Then she scored them all with a little razor type thing. Don't worry. On a scale of nothing to 4 failed IVs in one day it's MUCH closer to nothing. I waited 15 minutes and some bumps appeared. In all about half of them reacted and about 3/4 of them were pretty big (5-12mm).
I forgot to take a picture at the office but this is what my arms looked like an hour and a Benedryl later when I got home.
These blotches mean I'm highly allergic to cats/dog/rats and other animals, tree (especially Birch) pollen and grasses. And I'm moderately allergic to Ragweed and Mould.
I am a perfect candidate for allergy shots (but keep reading for the dilemma part of this post).
That means I will to on the top of the medication pyramid for TWO different medications for TWO different conditions.
I wouldn't stand next to me in a rain storm....
The only thing about these "Allergy Shots" is that it could make my Crohn's Disease worse. Dr. F said it like this.
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| Most normal people are here. |
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| Because I have Crohn's I am here. |
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| But I also have allergies so therefore I am here and here simultaneously. |
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| In order to try and get my allergy symptoms back to "normal" allergy shots push you towards the "normal" line. |
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| But because I have Crohn's and I'm on Remicade all the pushing on the allergy side will cause some pushing on the Crohn's side it could make it worse. |
So obviously I have some things to mull over. And the worst part is that he said it's only a new link that they are finding between immunotherapy and autoimmune diseases so there's not even any information on it online! You know how I like to research the crap out of things before they enter my body! Maybe I'll go and have a nice long chat with Dr. P.........
