I woke up on Monday morning thinking some new insect had invaded my bed during the night because my ankles were itchy. Came out to the couch and then it was my knees that became itchy. Wondered what in the world could do this when suddenly after looking more closely at both my knees and ankles saw that I had hives not bug bites. Figured I must have been having a reaction to something in the Chinese food or wine I had the night before so went on with my day thinking 'they'll go away' and 'if you drink lots of water you'll help get rid of them.
Throughout the day I had little boughts where the itch returned. In late afternoon I took a Benadryl and an Ibuprofen hoping they'd go away. As soon as I laid down in bed, they attacked at full force. I laid there for close to 2 hours trying not to scratch and knew that most likely I wouldn't be in school today.
At 4:30 this morning I woke up to major itchiness. Looked in the mirror and saw a swollen face, a beard of hives and the rest of my body looked ragged. I took more Benadryl and Ibuprofen, drank some water and wrote my sub plans for the day.
Fast forward to 3:00 this afternoon when I made my way to the dr. Erica gave me the number of a dermatologist she liked so I hopped in a taxi (that I ordered all by myself) and was off to Brasilia Shopping. Brasilia Shopping is a semicircular shaped building. There are lots of medical offices in the two outer towers so was dropped off by the taxi and more adventures began.
1. To go up in the elevator you have to check in at a main desk. You tell them the office you're visiting, your name, show photo id and they enter all this "stuff" into the computer. Once they're satisified, they give you a little visitor's tag and off you go.
2. The door to the dr's office was a little small to see so it took me a moment. Then I had to ring the doorbell to enter.
3. The receptionist spoke little English and I speak little medical Portuguese so we worked as a team to fill out all the necessary info. She was entering it onto her computer. Had it been a form to complete, I would have been just fine but we were able to gather all the necessary info. Celebration.
4. Met Dr. Campbell who has the best office view in the city...the lake, the monumental, just beautiful office space. He's very nice and speaks English. We went over my history the past few days of what I'd been eating and any medicines. Then he did the exam and pretty much told me I have a type of allergic reaction hives. That's what I thought as well but he thought they were not attributed to food as I had originally. He told me that doctors can only find the cause for 50% of all hive cases. Interesting. He wrote me 3 perscriptions...one for a steroid shot, Allegra and a cream to get rid of them. Nice guy and would recommend to others who may need a dermatologist in Brasilia.
5. In Brazil, when you get a shot, it's not done at the dr's office. Instead you take your Rx to the pharmacy. So I went to have my first perscription filled. Went down into the actual mall, presented one of the 12 clerks in a tiny pharmacy my order. She filled it, told me to go and pay and bring my little basket of drugs back to her. I did as I was told and she sought out the next tier of employee to actually give me my shot.
6. New fancy assistant (her title was _____ assistant - you can fill in the blank with whatever word you want) took me to a little room labeled Injection Room. She prepped by washing her hands very thoroughly, taking everything out of the package and then said something in Portuguese I didn't quite catch. I told her I only speak a little Portuguese where she then pointed to her butt. Ahhh. It was going to be one of those types of shots. So I dropped trow and got stuck. Didn't hurt too much. Only at the end when she was trying to get all of the gooey type medicine out of the syringe. She slapped a bandaid on me and I was done.
Hopefully all of this hardwork and my sore butt pays off and tomorrow, like Dr. Campbell told me, I should wake up feeling some relief. He actually told me to wait on the getting the other perscriptions but since everything's an adventure here, thought just better to have it now so I could start using if need be tomorrow. I'm just going to keep thinking of bees in hives and hope that the focus on other types of hives helps my body mentally to improve as well. Bees live in hives. Bees live in hives. Bees live in hives and not on me. Bees or hives.
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