Joan on the Road...of Life

We had a fun dinner with Tom and Renee on Saturday, celebrating Renee's birthday. They took us to Bubba Gump's Shrimp House where the waiter had to try 3 times to stump Tom on Forest Gump trivia questions. The best part of dinner to me was the Key Lime pie because it tasted just right.

Here's the birthday girl and her parentals...

I couldn't wait to get my wig off after dinner because my scalp was very itchy. Middle of the night I was up putting cold compresses on my itchy head. By morning, I realized it was more than my head and by noon on Sunday I was covered in hives!! Half a dozen times in my life I've had severe hives but his was about the worst. I thougth it wasn't serious as long as my breathing was OK but it was pretty damn uncomfortable. I considered going the the ER but couldn't bear the thought of sitting in the waiting room itching and scratching! Dumb move!!!

I took Benedryl every four hours, dozed through most of the day, trying to keep my hands off the hives, and called the doctor this morning. When I saw her at noon she got almost teary eyed and gave me a little lecture on waiting too long to do something. Seems she (or the ER) could have fixed me up pretty fast. 30 minutes of IV drip benedryl and steroids and I started feeling better. I actually had a 99 degree temp from the hive activity. By 4 PM I could barely feel the stinging, burning, itching, nasty hives.

What what caused it? Our best guess is the antibiotic I took last week (Levaquin). That makes four antibiotics I'm allergic to. We decided to drop the antibiotic regimen from the next round of chemo. It's given as a preventative measure but seems to give me more grief than benefit. I'll just need to monitor my temp closely to be sure I'm not getting a fever/ infection because my immune system is compromised for several days during chemo.

I'm feeling about a thousand percent better tonight and look forward to a good week!