Breather

For the first time as long as I can remember, I was admitted
to the hospital last weekend. It was the culmination of six days of
self-managing a bad case of urticaria (a skin condition usually brought about
by an allergic reaction to something, where you have red, exquisitely itchy
wheals with blanching warm centers and serpinginous borders which beautifully
coalesce). I had the classic target lesions (as Willy mentioned), ala-erythema
marginatum etc. My co-resident couldn’t help but take photos..in case they’re
needed for the medical students’ identify-the-skin-lesion exam. They were
beautiful to us who appreciated them, but they honest-to-goodness scared some
of my patients. Whenever I approached a bed for morning rounds, I had to warn:
"Ay, hindi po ito nakakahawa; allergy lang po. Ehem."

For six days, the urticaria waxed and waned with my
combination of steroids (to dampen the inflammation) and antihistamines (to
dampen the itchiness), until on my last day of Charity Ward rotation, I woke up
with an asymmetrical face: my urticaria developed into angioedema, affecting
deeper layers of my dermis. My lip was blown up, and right eye was squinched
closed; my palms had the  lesions as  well. I was itching  like
you can’t possibly imagine.

I displayed myself in front of my parents on my way out of
the house and declared, "Pa, Ma, kailangan ko na ata magpa-confine",
to which my Dad answered, "Stress lang yan…" Not!So I commuted all the
way back to Manila, rounded my ward patients for the last time, and had myself
admitted at the Philippine General Hospital, where I had been a medical
student, medical clerk, medical intern, and now, medical resident, and never
once before, a patient.

It was a strange experience: to be the one lying in bed
whose BP and vital signs were being taken, who was being asked how many times
I’ve urinated/ moved or how much I’ve already drank for the day… I
appreciated my co-residents so much more, who took turns watching over me even
as I was konked out from the Diphenhydramine given to me IV every 8 hours (which by the way, hurt really badly).

The IV Hydrocortisone (a steroid) worked wonders, that by
the time the consultant-in-charge did his rounds in the afternoon of my first
day, I almost looked normal. I was discharged the next day (The bill wasn’t
funny, even for PGH) and I went on duty at the MICU the day after.

If you’re asking how my lesions are now…Let’s just say
they’re behaving. They’re still here and there, but in a much repressed
mode. Hopefully, they’ll be completely gone once I’m finally off my meds. The
cause of all these is still unknown. Even to me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 at 4:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.