Mystery solved?

I think I finally know why I’ve had this itchy red rash… spreading around randomly, seeming to get better then appearing in a bunch of other places… for 9 weeks. It acted like I had poison oak oil on something in the house, but the rash didn’t look like poison oak, to the doctors, either. The regular doc shrugged and shot me in the butt, which did nothing.

At 6 weeks, mom left a message that boiled down to “maybe your bee stings are caused by nickel on the plants in the yard” so I wrote her off as having any useful info, although I am allergic to nickel.

After 9 weeks of this, of talking to my mom and having her ask the same questions about diet and stuff, she calls and leaves a message, she finally remembered she’s allergic to lanolin. I found no reference on the net until after my mom mentioned it.  I googled rashes for weeks and never saw lanolin on the lists of allergens. Now, when I google “lanolin allergy” I find it. This is probably the only useful info/advice from my mom in my adult life…

Lanolin is in the stuff they recommended for radiation  and I think I developed an allergy. Every time I used something else, it got better. When that ran out and I used the goo til I could get to the drug store, it got worse, and spread wherever the goo went…

Nice to know what it probably is. Now I just need it to go away.
I’m laundering everything that is coated with the damn goo…

I suggested I buy all new clothes and my husband said “okay”. I was surprised cause I was joking but he said “it would fit you, you haven’t bought anything for a long time… it’s not like ‘let’s go *shopping!*” Gosh I love him

Rash

I know I need to post, I want to post, but I keep getting confused about what I want to post about.

There’s this rash. What happened was, I got over my radiation burn, I got the flu. I got over the flu, I did some yard work, and then I got this rash. Around the same time, I read something that happened to someone else, and spent some time rubbing on my scar tissue and thinking “Oh I hope that doesn’t happen to me.” So maybe I got something on my hands in the yard and then rubbed it obsessively into my skin.

Also in the weeks preceding I had been getting really paranoid at work. I was convinced people were checking up on me, and I was expressing it on facebook and was rude to some people who deserved it. Now I think I really was picking up on something, since the department got merged and my bosses got changed without me knowing about it ahead of time. And maybe I gave myself hives. I had hives one other time, when I had accepted a new job, but had not given notice or told the people I was friends with at the old job. When I gave notice the hives went away.

And I just seem to have old lady, dry, sensitive skin, now. The upshot is I’ve spent the last 9 weeks rubbing various things into my skin. The rash will seem to die back and then will reappear in the areas right next to where it was. I hope it will only “go around” one time.

So there’s the rash, and then there’s work. I sort of feel like doing a timeline of this job, trying to get it all into one blog with the bare details. It’s pretty boring  but maybe it would make the stupid hives go away. Except, I’m nervous someone from there will find this blog… so I don’t want to do anything rash.