severe chronic urticaria

[genster]

Originally Posted by HAIRDOER

Thought I would post my last few weeks experience. I got a sinus infection and ended up going to the Dr. for antibiotics. She decided to try me on one more medicine....just for fun I guess for the hives. The only one I had not tried was Singular. I have been taking Sulfasalizine and been doing pretty good but but DUMB ME said ok. WHy not? I will give it a try. WHich ment going off my medice and trying it for a week or so. Give it time to really work. A couple of days I did not have very many hives but after 6-7 days and the Sulfa med. going out of my system I was getting hives everywhere. I have done this too many times to count and said forget it give me back my sulfasalizine! Now this medice takes a few weeks to really start working good so needless to say I have had some very miserable days and back to sleepless nights and swollen body parts and unable to walk because of swollen feet. Yuck! I hate this.
Well, nuthing gets me more motivated to find a permanent cure......anything to regain a normal life than being all hivey and in pain. SO my research continues and I have come across several new things that I need to check into further.
Just a few are...Anabolic steriods...systemic.
Warfarin therapy
Blood thinners like Coumiden
anbd then there is meds like Chemo. Methotrexate and also Neoral. I had one dermatologist wnat to put me one that but it increases your chances of getting cancer and lowers the immune system. I have read about Colchine being used asa anti-inflamitory. All of these drugs are serious stuff and I am not sure if I am willing to go that far. I have been doing this almost 3 years now and and pretty tired of it too. At least I have found one thing that helps me and is better than a life of steriods.
my Dr. says I am way ahead of her and know more about it than anyone she knows. I go in for more blood work next week. Wish me luck!

hey Hairdoer, sorry to hear you're all itchy again. that sucks. I have been relatively hive-free for about a week, only a couple a day. Weird how now that is a good thing, when a couple of years ago I'd have been concerned. I hope you feel better soon.

[ttddttdd]

Hairdoer - bummer getting the hives again. I actually was hive free for a few months once. I thought they had gone away. When they came back it was at full force. I would just like to find a doctor that is willing to do more testing. I have been to several, and after they have thrown about a dozen meds at me they say that my hives at idiopathic (they don't know what is causing them) and that's like the end of the road. I take Hydroxyzine at night, it doesn't really stop the itching but if I take enough it knocks me out so I can at least get some good sleep. But, I feel like a zombie most of the time. At least it sounds like your doctor is willing to try some things that may be unconventional.

[snowbarbie]

This is the first time I have logged onto this site and thank goodness I found it. About 20 years ago, long ago and far away, before we all had computers at our finger-tips, I broke out in hives on the palms of my hands. They seemed to be deep under my skin and itched like the dickens. My doctor said I was allergic to something and gave me Chlortripolon. This made things worse, but he insisted that I could not be allergic to allergy medicine, so I continued to increase the dosage in the hope that I would get some relief. I scratched harder after taking a hot lemon cold remedy, and scratched worse again when I took yellow vitamins. My doctor told me it was "stress related". Finally, after one terrible year of being swollen all over my body at one time or another, I figured out that there was something in all of these products that made me ill. Once I stopped taking everything that had yellow colourant (Tartrazine) in it, I gradually stopped getting hives. I have been symptom free for 19 years and never anticipated having this problem again. But, this week, I have broken out in circular blotches on the palms of my hands and they are so itchy that they are driving me mad! I am taking Benadryl but it isn't helping much, just makes me "spacey". Even reading that other people out there have the same problem somehow makes it easier. I will be going to the doctor tomorrow, armed with the information I have got from all your pages.

[ahimsa]

Originally Posted by snowbarbie

This is the first time I have logged onto this site and thank goodness I found it. About 20 years ago, long ago and far away, before we all had computers at our finger-tips, I broke out in hives on the palms of my hands. They seemed to be deep under my skin and itched like the dickens. My doctor said I was allergic to something and gave me Chlortripolon. This made things worse, but he insisted that I could not be allergic to allergy medicine, so I continued to increase the dosage in the hope that I would get some relief. I scratched harder after taking a hot lemon cold remedy, and scratched worse again when I took yellow vitamins. My doctor told me it was "stress related". Finally, after one terrible year of being swollen all over my body at one time or another, I figured out that there was something in all of these products that made me ill. Once I stopped taking everything that had yellow colourant (Tartrazine) in it, I gradually stopped getting hives. I have been symptom free for 19 years and never anticipated having this problem again. But, this week, I have broken out in circular blotches on the palms of my hands and they are so itchy that they are driving me mad! I am taking Benadryl but it isn't helping much, just makes me "spacey". Even reading that other people out there have the same problem somehow makes it easier. I will be going to the doctor tomorrow, armed with the information I have got from all your pages.

Thanks so much for posting - as a sufferrer of "idiopathic" chronic (but intermittent) hives, I try to absorb every bit if info about hives on this board. 19 years is a a very long time ago. Do you remember - how long did it take after cutting out the Yellow 5 for the hives to be completely gone? Weeks? Months?

Thanks,
Kristi

[snowbarbie]

I'm not sure I remember exactly how long it took to stop getting the hives completely after eliminating Tartrazine, but I think it was several weeks.

I went to my doctor two days ago, and he prescribed Atarax and Ranitadine, so now I have to wait and see if this helps.

So far, I only have the hives on the palms of my hands and I really don't want it to flare up into a full blown, full body giant hive - that really is not pretty! It may be 20 years since this happened last, but I still remember how awful it was. My face was so bad that my husband, who was a wonderful sweet man, did not want to be seen in daylight with me! Sometimes my face and eyes were so swollen that I had to wear dark glasses when I went to work; I'm sure some of my colleagues thought I had been beaten up, it was so bad. It was hard to explain that it was hives - everybody thinks of hives as a temporary, minor inconvenience, but we all know it's not.