Tired of Being Sick

I don't understand why in the last 4-5 months I've gotten sick so much. It actually started earlier than that. September. It was my birthday and I was moving to a new apartment...in 90 degree weather. I had a terrible cold and was completely miserable. My head and ears throbbed to the point where I was lying on the floor in tears and to those who know me that was a big thing since I'm not prone to tears.

Then after the wedding and honeymoon I came to work in early January...and discovered I was breaking out in hives. No big deal, I figured they would go away in a few days, maybe a week at the most. A month went by and I had broken out at least once every day, in different areas and to different degrees of severity. It was miserable, especially since the doctors couldn't figure out what was causing them.

Then just this past week I noticed some little red bumps on my left hand. I thought, Oh great! Hives are back. I pulled up the sleeve of my shirt to see what extent they had traveled up my arm. They just stayed around the underside of my left wrist and the palm of my hands. Odd. The next day I saw a few red bumps on the palm of my right hand. But these felt different than hives and I knew they had to be something different. I took Benedryl and all sorts of medication that I had on hand from my hives experience, but nothing was helping.

I went to urgent care, they gave me a steroid cream but they still didn't know what was wrong. They offered me a business card to a dermatologist office, I called but unfortunately they couldn't see me until May. So I talked to my parent's and they gave me the number to their doctor. I scheduled an appointment with my parents' doctor that same day. When I saw him he said in his 20+ years of experience as a doctor, he has never seen my condition in his life. He even pulled another specialist from his office into the room to check out my hands. He didn't know what it was either. The doctor assured me that he would call a couple dermatologists that he knew first thing the following morning.

I got into the dermatologist around 2pm in the afternoon, expecting to be poked and scraped but he said since my condition had been going on for 4 days now, the best time to do any tests would have been on the first day of the break out. Funny he says that when it's darn near impossible to get an immediate appointment with a dermatologist. Anyway, he still got to examine me and he came up with some sort of an explanation for me. Even though it's not for sure, since he wasn't able to do tests to confirm but he had a good idea that it is a form of Herpes Simplex. I pretty much freaked out at that point, but he assured me that just like cold sores are a strain of "herpes"...that is kind of what I have on my arm and palms. He said it would go away in a couple weeks and to put steroid cream on and it will be fine. Well, I'm glad I finally have an answer to why I was in agony over my arm and palms itching and burning like crazy.

But it does not end there...

I woke up this morning with a sore throat, swollen glands, throbbing head, muffled ears, and achy body. Lovely. I thought I was done with all my sickness. Then I remembered that the dermatologist had said I have a weakened immune system now, which probably helped bring on my arm herpes stuff in the first place.

I just want to be well again!