Obviously I immediately switched off of that brand of detergent, but the itchiness lingered. I thought that perhaps it was the fabric softener, so we found a dye free fragrance free softener... Still no improvement. I washed all my sheets and blankets like 10 times, just in case there was some residue.
A couple of months later, I decided to start eliminating things from my diet that might be causing the reaction- I already am pretty much dairy free and very low gluten, but I started playing around with eliminating artificial sweeteners (I was drinking a lot of Crystal Light). I noticed some improvement and could usually sleep with only one or two pills, but still the itchiness lingers. The doctors I've spoken to seem to have no idea what is going on, and kind of just gloss over it. They told me it was probably just an allergic reaction.
It's been about a yer and a half now, and although there has been some improvement, pretty much any time my skin gets brushed or scratched, it swells up like a bee sting and gets itchy like a mosquito bite. It's not too terrible, but it's really embarrassing when I brush mascara off my eyelid and look like I've been punched in the face five ute later, or when my seatbelt touches my neck and then I have to walk around for an hour looking like I have a hicky.
Last week Luis wanted to watch a documentary that was suggested to us on Netflix. It is called 'Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead,' and it chronicles two men's journey to cure themselves of a disease known as Urticaria Vasculosa via juice fasting. The shocking thing to me was that their symptoms sounded eerily similar to my own weird skin thing, so I did a little search and my bizarre disease has a name- Dermographic Urticaria. Here's a link.
The mystery is finally solved.
Now the question remains, what to do about it?
2 comments:
well, did their juice fast work???
According to the narrator, yes. Of course it is a film so they may be sugar coating things.
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