I had quite a scare Thursday, let me tell you about it. I had spent the day baking dinner rolls, which was rather frustrating, since they didn’t want to rise properly. Anyway, they turned out great and my husband loved them. Later that night, I felt like some ice cream. A couple of days earlier we had bought sherbet, me Cherry and he a mixed box of Mango and Pina Colada. I didn’t feel like cherry, so I had a mango one. After eating it, I felt my lip going tingly and it felt a bit funny, like when I eat apple or pears. I am allergic to both of them, and I usually go very itchy inside my mouth and throat, and my lip feels funny. It’s usually cured with chewing some ice. But since I didn’t feel anything but the tingle, I didn’t really care.

I did however, comment to my husband that I was feeling tingly, and that I was probably allergic to mango. He made fun of me, and claimed that it was probably just in my head. I called him meanie and tickled him senseless, it was all in good fun. Later that night I took all my meds and subsequently fell dead asleep (my muscle relaxers are slightly sedative).

I woke up at 1 in the morning, my whole body itching badly, and my mouth and throat too. I tried suppressing it, since my husband is a very light sleeper and he hates being woken up. It didn’t work, and I had a hard time breathing. I sat up and started itching, I could feel bumps all over my legs, and it felt like my head was on fire. I got up, went downstairs and poured some of the cold water from the refrigerator into a bowl and wet a towel, I also filled and drank a tall glass of water. I tried dabbing parts of my body with the wet towel, trying to make it stop. I was crying by now, slightly frantic. It didn’t stop, and it was getting harder to breathe. I went upstairs and found my husband awake. I told him I had to go to the hospital. We got dressed in a hurry, me looking like crap and him managing to look stylish at 1.30 am…. I packed down all the meds I was taking, very surprised that I managed to be that levelheaded, still crying of course.

We live about five minutes from the hospital, which felt very good. Coming into the hospital, my husband did everything for me, talked and arranged everything, while I was crying. They were very compliant, I realize now later, but apparently my face had swelled up and gone bright red, and besides, when my husband puts on his commanding Marine voice, he usually gets whatever he wants. I was put into a wheelchair (See! I didn’t even have to walk!) and wheeled away into the depths of the hospital, without husband. He was stuck filling out some papers. I must have been pretty bad, cause they helped me right away, and some nice nurse came and talked to me. With her, a nice doctor who started asking a million questions, and me rambling on about god knows what (I was still on the muscle relaxers, remember. They make me high…..). The nurse started an IV and I got medicine fed directly into my system. That knocked me out even further, but I got better.

We didn’t get home until like 4:30. It turns out, I had a very bad allergic reaction to the mango sherbet. Very bad. We were lucky that I woke up and that I didn’t go into anaphylactic shock (google the term. I did, and it scared the shit out of me). The event terrified me. Really. I have had allergic reactions before, but never this bad. Not even close. It does scare me, especially since I am taking the sedative muscle relaxers, so that I can sleep easier. What if I wouldn’t have woken up? What if I had been on the old muscle relaxers, which really knocked me out? Scary thought.

Next time I go to the doctor, this Friday, we are going to go about to get me an emergency epinephrine kit (See EpiPen or Twinject at Wiki). Just in case. This really caught me off guard, and if it ever happens again, I want to be ready for it.

So there you have it. More needles. There have been way too many of them the last week. I’m fine now, but as Bonnie the nurse told me sternly, I shall keep away from the mango.