Free at last..?

Well, at least I didn't have to visit the hospital for a good 3 weeks. And I call them good because those weeks were almost symptom-free and my skin didn't have to get punctured anywhere! =) Anyway, time to settle the score from September and finally get a complete allgery test done. This is done in three steps: Monday morning (10/12) I go to see the allergy doctor and we discuss what I want to have examined, she makes a list and I wait for the nurse to prepare the patches. The nurse then pretty much covers my entire back with strips of small round shaped paches with different substances that are common allergens. Then I take it easy (not that I was planning for a marathon) for 48h and make no sudden movements and try to sleep flat on my back so that the adhesive tape keeping the patches in place doesn't come off. On Wednesday (12/12) the patches are removed and the itchy spots are marked as possible allergic reactions. In fact all the patch-areas are marked with a black marker and covered with adhesive tape again so that they can find the right spots on Friday (14/12). But the exposed areas are not covered so they are now "breathing freely". Did I meantion I don't get to shower all week? At least not my upper body.. Sweaty and nice! Wednesday they also did a prick test on my arm which only took about 45min and gave no surprising results really.. Same old, same old! Finally on Friday all the tape is removed and patch-areas are analyzed and I get to shower! Not the most convenient of weeks but at least they got some new results.

From the prick test, which I've done once before, it was reconfirmed that I have problems with pretty much any animals with fur, horse being the worst, and some plants and trees (pollen). The only thing that changed is that I seem to have cured my dust mite allergy? Yay! The patch test confirmed that I don't have penicillin allergy (which I thought I've had all my life) and I do have a violent reaction to nickel. The newcomers were Lyral and some kind of perfumes mix that occur in most hygiene products, soaps, detergents and such. So that's fun, if it says "perfume" on the bottle, I shouldn't use it! One of these days I'm going to have to get me one of those bubbles to live in. "Look, there's Bubble-Bro!!" Looking forward to that. But yeah, all in all a "fun" week and I got to visit TYKS frequently yet again. Now to surf the web for a king-size bubble..

Prick test: