The Adventures of Lobster Girl

Thursday was a very nice day in most respects. I went to work. I came home. I worked on dinner. Our friends came over and we had dinner. The kids played. It was a nice evening. Then, since I hadn’t had time to workout all day, I hopped on the treadmill. My training plan had me do about 5 miles, most of it at a “pushing it” sort of speed. It took me about 45 minutes and I was feeling pretty good about my abilities … then just as I was getting off the treadmill, my palms started getting itchy. Like REALLY itchy. So itchy I wanted to scratch my skin off.

I figured maybe it was a sweat thing and I started doing my post-run activities (slamming water, downloading my Garmin data, etc.) A few minutes later Matt came up to our room to chat and hang out and I showed him my hands, which had been itching like crazy the whole time. About then my feet started doing the same trick. This was not my first allergy attack rodeo and I quick-like downed a Benedryl and hopped in the shower just in case it was an environmental trigger. In the shower my face started feeling weird … tight.

By the time I got out my face was puffy and swollen and RED. I got dressed and Matt was researching all of this via Dr. Google. He found what we were looking for, Exercise Induced Anaphylaxis and some descriptions that fit my symptoms PERFECTLY. By this time over 30 minutes had passed and I wasn’t feeling better. Matt said parts of my face were so red they were turning blue/purple. And even more disturbing, my tongue felt tingly and heavier. We called my sister to see if she could hang with the kids and then I started feeling more panicked and Matt ran across the alley to our neighbor’s house to see if they could stay with them until she arrived.

We drove to the hospital (the very same one both the kids were born in). By the time we got there, I was feeling better, but was still quite red and a bit swollen. I debated checking in, but decided we should get to the bottom of this in any case. So I went ahead and they saw me quite quickly. They determined I’d definitely had EIA and was recovering nicely enough so that I didn’t require IV drugs (yay). They gave me Prednisone, Zantac and more Benedryl. The Zantac seemed like a weird choice, but apparently the same thing that blocks acid blocks histamines.

After a few hours of fun they sent me home with some prescriptions and many choruses of “You look much better!” All was quiet when we got home. My sister, bless her heart, had stayed with the kids happily incident free. I was grateful once again to have all this excellent help right at our finger-tips.

The thing that you might not know about a major allergic reaction is that it absolutely exhausts you … well it does me at least. I’m not sure if it’s the anti-histamines or just my body’s response to the stress of the reaction, but I can hardly function normally following a reaction. I need to sleep for many hours. Luckily, Matt was able to let me sleep in and I weathered the day with the kids pretty well.

I did a little bit of research and found that this is somewhat common, in fact, one of my running buddies has had this happen twice in her past. It’s unlikely to be a common thing and is usually related to a combination of some food + exercise. Since I usually workout in the wee small hours on an empty stomach, it’s not really surprising I’ve never had this happen before. I made notes about what I ate. Hopefully this will never happen again, but if it does, maybe I’ll be able to figure out a trigger.