Mystery Solved!!

Yeah! What I have is hives and they're an allergic reaction. Still itchy but some places slightly less than yesterday. After trying over and over to figure out what might have caused them I thought back to the only other time I've had something like this and it was almost 15 years ago and I was allergic to a fur coat of a coworker that I tried on.

What happened this time was on the weekend I took one of my own pillows from home and used one of the cottage pillows as my 'hugging pillow.' Sure enough, when I talked to my dad this morning he went upstairs and checked and it's a feather pillow. Not sure what kind of feathers - I just know my body doesn't like them! (I slept with a feather pillow for years as a kid but now my body doesn't like them at all as I found out the hard way!) I have huge welts on the inside of my arms from my wrists to almost my shoulders, my chest, neck and chin. Yup....everywhere that pillow would have touched my skin. Even though it had 2 pillow cases on it it was more than my body could handle so it reacted. Yuck! Not too many new spots appearing today which is good because they seem to be most itchy when they first come up. Some places are blistering but not really painful or itchy there. I tell ya...I look like Casper walking around! :o) The best way to deal with the itching has been numerous oatmeal baths and lots of calamine lotion and Benadryl.

Oh well, it's been a lesson learned and I just feel so relieved that we've finally determined the cause so that I can avoid a similar situation in the future!

Itchy Scratchy signing off!