The Hives are Back

I have hives again. They started about a week ago after I had a pizza from a new cafe in town. Two little ones on my right hand on either side of my middle finger knuckle. Then yesterday on the way home from work, a big one popped up on my right thigh. I know this is just the beginning of probably months of hiving.

The heat doesn't help. Not being able to take benedryl all day doesn't help either. Itching them is a bad idea, but how can one help it when they feel like fire! Oh the quandries!

The first time I had hives was in 7th grade. I woke up with my mouth swollen inside out, my eyes swollen shut and a horrible looking collection of hives all over my stomach and back. I had another outbreak (smaller, but still with the grotesque looking face) about 3 months after the first. The dr. said it was definitely something I ate--probably tomatoes and oranges. Nothing you can do about them but take benedryl and wait for them to run their course. Then nothing until I was in graduate school.

That time was just annoying. I broke out in hives every day for months and months. I was studying for my comprehensive exams and was stressed about the whole ordeal. And for good reason as this was the exam meeting that ended in absolute disaster--"who cares if you've spent the last 6 months reading from this list," my committee said, "you need to start over with a different list. Oh, you're broke and tired of it? That's just life as a graduate student. Guess you shouldn't have gotten married and had kids if you wanted this career." After I picked myself up from the utter shock of that ordeal--the hives were gone and not to be seen again...until last week.

Am I freaking out because I am similarly entering the final stages of THIS PhD? Or is it just that life at work has gotten ridiculously stressful of late? Or is it that I keep WAITING for someone to follow through with the promise to hire me to do the evaluation work I want to do? Or is it having teenagers has finally pushed beyond my ability to tolerate? Or is it simply something I ate?

Nevertheless, I have a magnet that I picked up when visiting a friend in Portland, Oregon. The basic premis of the words on the magnet are dream, laugh, enjoy yourself. In bold letters across the top of the other five or so phrases is written in script "Live Loudly." During my ordeal with the hives in Kentucky, the girls were just learning to read script well, and they thought it read "Hive Loudly." Guess I need to take a deep breath and try to follow the REAL words on that magnet and hopefully this outbreak of hives won't be so bad...