>So. It’s Oscar night. Unlike in many years past, I am not sitting clustered around the television with all my movie-loving friends, vying to win the prize for having made the most, best educated guesses on our party ballot. Where am I instead? Sitting in a pile on my mother’s couch in Marshall, Texas, nursing a poisoned body. Yes. Poisoned. Unintentionally. Unknowingly, even. Did you know that even if you have never exhibited any kind of allergy to any kind of drug for your entire life on earth, all of a sudden, you can be allergic to two different classes of drugs? Regrettably, it is true.

Last Wednesday, my hives starting to show up again, little by little, disguised as little red chicken-pox-like dots on my torso. On Thursday, they were back in larger patches, on more parts of my body. Thursday afternoon, I was having fever and chills and flu-like achy body symptoms. I called our employee health clinic to see if I could come get a flu test (because I had been exposed to a co-worker with the flu), but they were booked up and made me an appointment for noon on Friday. Upon leaving work on Thursday, it occurred to me that I was staring down a weekend with a commute to and from Marshall for my very first (two) bridal showers at my mom’s church and at my church there. I had been looking forward to that weekend for a VERY long time, and I decided that it was a better idea to go ahead to another walk-up clinic Thursday night, get the flu diagnosis and start taking Tami-flu ASAP. After several hours in the waiting room, I went back to the exam rooms, and they swabbed my nose, testing the fruits of that excavation, and the flu test was negative.

No flu? Why did I feel so close to death’s door? They gave me a couple of prescriptions – one for something to help me sleep when my busy brain will not let me and an antibiotic called Ceftin for my alleged sinus infection (I’m still positing that the “doctor” who attended me in that clinic was a veterinarian-in-waiting). I waited until the next day to fill my prescriptions so that I could do that at our employee health clinic and not have to pay a $100 deductible (a serendipitous, God-thing because if I had started that antibiotic one day earlier . . . well, just read on for the gory details and could-have-been-worse scenario).

Cut to Friday morning. More hives. Some fever. Went to work and had plans to cancel the noon appointment at the clinic. As the morning wore on, and I found myself unable to stop scratching, I decided to spend my lunch break with the doctor. She saw the hives, prescribed me a steroid pack to last seven days, gave me some anti-anxiety medication to last 20 days should I need it, and prescribed another steroid shot. And she sent me on my way. I filled those prescriptions as well as the ones given to me by Doctor Doolittle the night before.

When I got to my car, I pulled out some cash to buy myself some lunch on the way back to campus, and I took the first dose of steroids and antibiotics. During the afternoon, nothing felt better. Friday night, I got dinner with my friend Karen at Napoli’s (“Good evening, beautiful ladies, are you enjoying your dinner?” – if you’ve ever eaten there, you know that guy). Then Karen followed me to my house to help me get together some boxes and other items for Chris and Jason to move to Dallas on the weekend.

One of the items was my queen-sized bed, so I slept in my guest room. I usually turn the heat down at night, but I guess because I was having fever, I got chilled during the night, and mindlessly reached over to turn on my heated mattress pad so I could warm up and sleep comfortably. When I woke up Saturday morning, my hives had multiplied and intensified. I ate a little breakfast, took my medicine, got ready, packed and hit the road. As I was driving and listening to a very interesting book on tape, whose title I have totally forgotten by now, I glanced in the rearview mirror only to see that my lips had swollen four times their usual size. Fine if you are looking to make a name for yourself in the adult film industry, not so fine if you are going to meet a roomful of lovely ladies, friends and family, and poised for a lot of camera flashes. Some of my own family did not recognize me!

I tried as best I could to maintain composure (somewhat successfully – I learned as a very young girl the value of laughing at myself). There were about forty people at the shower in the beautiful Central Baptist Church parlor, and I would like to take this moment to apologize to any of you wonderful guests with whom I did not get to visit. By the time you saw me, I had ingested Benadryl, Xanax (on doctor’s advice), and Ceftin, the antibiotic that I did not know was poisoning me.

Not until Sunday did I understand that I had been fueling the problem by taking those antibiotics. I had blamed every other obvious variable in my life for the past three weeks for all this diabolical distress. First, I had no idea. Then I blamed the paint primer. Next, I thought it might be work stress. Packing and moving stress? Primer stress again? Then, there the hives were again, out of the blue.

The doctor suggested that with all of the above, perhaps my ordinarily strong-as-an-ox immune system was suppressed, and it could not resist my newfound penicilline and cephalosporin allergies. Yes, both of them. Three weeks ago, I had strep throat (for the first time in my life, and I have been exposed to it A LOT!), and I took a full, ten-day mega-course of Amoxicillin. AND a SHOT of penicillin straight into my system! Several days later, the first hives breakout occurred, but it coincided with the paint priming of my future living room, so it was easy to blame the fumes. Two steroid shots. Hives gone within 24 hours. But apparently, the poison was there in my body, incubating, waiting for those shots to wear off seven days later. Because on the 8th day . . . scratch-scratch, itch-itch.

Fast forward to 2nd course of antibiotics (I hate the things, by the way, and I usually try to ride out the illness if it’s not too severe). But this time, there was too much going on, and I just didn’t have the energy to fight it by myself. Big mistake.

Well, clearly I need an editor, because I am going on too long, but all of this to say that I have been shoveling poison into my sweet little body for three weeks now, and right now, I look like I got closed up in a hermetically sealed room with a swarm of killer bees. Since Friday, I have used three full tubes of cortisone cream to help avoid itching to death, and today, when I could no longer stand it, I asked my mom to take me to Longview to the doctor. I had enough clarity to call my insurance company to find someone to see on a Sunday, and they kept me out of the ER when my mom remembered a little clinic in a shopping center in Pine Tree. I called WEB TPA back, and they confirmed that the clinic accepted my insurance. And there was virtually no wait. I begged for another of those quick-acting steroid shots, but the doc told me that since I had had a shot on Friday (glad I remembered to mention that), a shot on Sunday would send my body into adrenal shock which would then send my body into the ER with IV’s and a multiple-day stay. Pass on that option. Thanks.

So he gives me a much higher dose of oral steroids, and tells me to eat lunch and clears me to go to my second bridal shower for the weekend. We make a mad dash to Marshall, I call two of the shower hostesses to let them know I will be there, but I will be late, and my mother drops me off at her house and goes to Walgreen’s to buy two cans of burn spray (perhaps my most inspired idea to date – numb the skin so that it doesn’t know it’s itching!), four tubes of cortisone cream (as of right now, displaced by the lidocaine spray), new steroids and Zantac (which apparently makes the steroids work more efficiently for whatever reason).

Oh, one more gory detail. When you are being poisoned, and your body figures out that it needs to get rid of the poison for you . . . guess what? It does. But I don’t throw up. So . . . imagine the delight of adding the alternative method of purging poison into the red, itchy, hivy mix.

So, that was my weekend. How was yours?

In honor of Oscar, I would like to thank . . .

My mother, who has nursed me like a baby through this crisis, and who has gone out of her way to make certain that I am comfortable and fully prepared for whatever comes next.

My friend Lori, who gave up an inordinate amount of her personal/family time this weekend to come to my showers and to offer help and encouragement and ideas to ease my mind and body.

My sister Tara, who found hours in her days that I know she does not feel like she has, to come to my showers, to keep track of all those amazing gifts, and to extend to me her unique brand of empathy, genuine positive regard and just plain beautiful smile and good humour.

My friend Becky, who arrived within minutes after my calling her to give her expert opinion of the spread of the hive monster all over my body.

My aunt Tommie, who let me crash at her house when my mom’s neighbors were burning leaves to which I am allergic, and I just didn’t feel like I could stand to get congested on top of all this other. Oh, and I think I owe her, like, three rolls of toilet tissue for that three hour visit.

The lovely ladies who put together those two showers for me – I was so excited about them, and I hope that, in spite of my grotesque appearance and compulsion to show you my red, splotchy skin, you were able to see that I was brimming with gratitude, and I truly did feel like a woman being honored by people who love her and her mother. Thanks to each of you!

To every guest who gave of their time and treasure to share this special time with me – I know there were numerous of you with whom I did not get to spend much time catching up, but please know that I saw you there, and I will never forget the gift of you!