Idiopathic Urticaria

You may be thinking, "What the heck is Idiopathic Utricaria." Well, I found out the hard way by taking a not-so-expenses-paid trip to the E.R. tonight around 10:00. It all started after supper when the side of my face felt hot. I didn't think much of it. So we stopped at the indoor rummages and hit up Mc Donalds for a dessert (the snack sized Mc Flurries are just the right size, and easy on the pocket book). I was feeling the side of my face and noticed I had a bug bite of some sort right next to my right eye. I also felt one on my neck. It was about the size a nickel. This wasn't completely unusual as I swell up whenever I get a bug bite to the size of a half dollar. Anyways, once we got home (around 7:30) I consulted my sister who is a nurse and she thought this whole thing was strange and figured it was a spider bite without looking at it. 

Ginormous Welt!

As the night went on, around 8:15ish I put some Hydrocortizone cream on the welts. It was this time it started to spread....and fast. I had DH go get me some Benadryl at 9:30 to try and clear this thing up. By that point it was all the way down the side of my face and half way across my neck. It was this point I was thinking this is not normal - going from the size of a quarter to about 3-4" wide and 2" tall within an hour and a half! I knew acute care was closed, but I thought I would wait a while for the Benadryl to do it's job. 

So I gave Macyn a bath and Josh then put her to bed. When he was finished he came out and told me how much worse it had gotten in the 10 minutes he didn't see me. It was now 10:00 and he convinced me to get this checked out by the Dr. and not wait until morning. I was worried too because my sister said if it swells too bad I could have trouble breathing.

Reluctantly I went to the ER, just thinking in the back of my head how much this is gonna cost. So the Dr. comes in and exclaims, "THAT IS A HUGE HIVE!" He went over my symptoms and diagnosed it as Idiopathic Utricaria, which essentially means that you're allergic to something but nobody knows what it is. It can last a day or months. He once had a patient who had it over her body and sent her to a specialist and they couldn't figure out what caused it. The weird part is, I have absolutely no known allergies. He mentioned possibly keeping me over night to make sure the swelling on my neck doesn't cause me trouble breathing, but he was pretty confident I would be okay. He told me to call ASAP if I get any other weird symptoms or can't breath. It definitely is more swollen so it feels like I have gunk in the throat, but I feel like the airway is still clear. He told me to keep taking Benadryl and Zyrtec as needed, and there isn't much else I can do. I cannot think of anything I ate out of the ordinary (this isn't caused by topical applications), so its pretty much a mystery.

So even though I hate to see the ER bill, I am glad I went and knowing it isn't anything serious. And right now as I type this, it is from ear to ear and about 3.5" thick. My face is really hot and the welt kinda burns. I just hope it doesn't last too long since I look like I gained 30 lbs! The Dr. told me it was a good idea to come in. He's a pretty blunt Dr. who tells it like it is. He told me to google Idiopathic Utricaria and I told him I would but I couldn't spell it...

so he wrote it down for me :)