1 whole week of urticaria with no relief from prednisolone / citrizine / chloraphenamine
Sorry for the long post!!!
I’m writing here purely out of desperation and to hear everyone else’s fix to urticaria!
On a Sunday afternoon I arrived back in the UK from Turkey. I spent a week all inclusive with some questionable time on the toilet which I pinned down to alcohol and all inclusive buffet… maybe even brushing my teeth with the tap water but we were told this was fine as it is safe as long as we’re not drinking it in volume.
On the Tuesday after arriving home I had the worst chest / sinus cold&flu I have ever had. I slept sat up in bed, my cough was like a dog bark, I felt floored!
On Wednesday I decided to research ways to kill cold and flu fast and learnt that raw garlic chopped releases allicin which can inhibit colds & histamines causing illness. So I quartered an organic raw garlic clove and swallowed it!
On Thursday morning my cold and flu was completely gone, I was ready to go back to work!
On a Thursday evening, I started with hives on my wrists, I have had hives before so got my fiancé to bring antihistamines home as this usually helps. I am only known to be allergic to sudafed so I don’t take it. I took citrizine and went to sleep.
On Friday morning I woke up with more itching on my wrists but it wasn’t too bad so I went to work my 13 hour shift on A&E. By 7pm one of my colleagues looked at me and said I look terrible, they prompted a doctor to look at me. By this time the rash was all over my body, my lips were extremely swollen and my eyes. The doctor admitted me, cannulated me and gave me hydrocortisone IV. Sent me home with prednisolone as I had to be back at work the following day at 7am so I insisted I needed to sleep at home and the hydrocortisone seemed to get rid of the swelling.
On Saturday morning at 5am I woke up in very intense pain, my whole body was red and swollen, my face was huge I was dry heaving over the toilet and crying. My fiancé drove me to A&E where my HR was 150 so they did and ECG and cannulated me again. I was given hydrocortisone, chloraphenamine, 1 litre sodium chloride all IV. This seemed to help slightly but I left later that afternoon still slightly puffy.
Because of the hydrocortisone I was told not to start my oral steroids at home until the next morning. So on Saturday afternoon after discharge from the hospital, I went home for a nap and woke up again covered in hives! I went straight back to A&E and ended up spending the night until Sunday morning. That overnight stay I had hydrocortisone, chloraphenamine, citrizine, prednisolone, and then a morning dose of prednisolone before leaving.
This comes to Sunday morning, at home, itching, suffering still, waiting for Monday morning to call the gp for a referral to immunology as instructed. I saw the GP on Monday afternoon and I have been referred to immunology but they have a target to review within 18 weeks. I can’t cope with the sleepless itchy nights with a high heart rate and also a job I need to keep! I have to add that upon my last discharge my LFT’s were elevated probably due to all the medical intervention and inflammation, and my potassium on the cusp of being too low.
I am keen to hear if anyone else has managed to relieve reoccurring urticaria at home, was it the garlic? Maybe I picked something up abroad? Also to add I do now have 2 Epi-pens at home that I was given on my first admission on Friday evening. Thanks for reading!