This Sh!t Again!

 

Okay, I am going to rant. Why? My Mast Cell, and I ran up on a situation yesterday that is a repeat over and over again.

Yesterday Jim and I went in the morning to pick up t-shirts ordered for the church. We walked in and I had an immediate reaction to the screen printing inks being used on the tee shirt printing machine. Not an immediate anaphylaxis reaction, but my lungs tightened down. I got out of there quickly. I've been there before a number of times and never reacted, but they were actively printing this time. The smell was overwhelming.

Get out, get home and medicate. The reaction starts building, getting worse as the day moves on. My lips and tongue started tingling, my face started swelling, my eye lids started to swell shut. Push a second and then a third round of meds.

Go with Jim to run an essential errand that cannot be put off, and I start reacting to dust on the road, exhaust, the smell of road tar, you name it. Skedaddle on home, take round four of meds. Just done for the day. Take a shower to wash any possible lurking contaminates off my skin and hair and have a hard time standing because my oxygen levels have dropped so low now that I'm right on the cusp of needing to get supplemental oxygen from the ER. Go to bed after deciding to cancel out on a outing to a friend's home.

While laying in bed looking at my Ipad I start exchanging messages with a friend also going to this other person's home. I tell her why I'm not attending, that I'm struggling with my mast cell. She says this "Why don't you just go? You'll have a good time. Just push on through and ignore it."

I am positively gobsmacked by her reaction, telling her "You just do not get it." and ending the conversation at that. This is the same friend I’ve been swinking and toting around to get her back looked at, trying to get her pain relief, getting her groceries. Whom I am feeling put upon by because of her many daily favors. This just added to the way I was feeling about that. I knew she didn’t have a clue about my mast cell, even as she’d seen me get very wheezy a number of times just being within ten feet of the hot tub while it was going.

The hostess was understanding, but someone who has seen me react mightily and take to my bed now more than a couple of times tells me to suck it up. Oh gal, no, no, no!

Good luck being swinked and toted around the next time your back goes haywire my soon to be ex friend.

This isn’t something you can think happy thoughts and immediately recover from. It dropped my oxygen levels to 90. But I have experienced this same crazy “think happy thoughts” thing before, even here. Once at a birthday party where I asked the birthday lady if the cake had peanuts in it because it looked like it might. I was told oh don’t be silly, no peanuts there, besides Jesus protects and He heals as long as you maintain happy thoughts and right thinking. Took one bite, tasted peanuts and we’re off to the fuckturd rodeo of bad reaction, epipen, hospital. As they were wheeling out a wheezing me to the ambulance the birthday girl told me she never dreamed peanut allergies were real. What, she thought we were all making it up like some overgrown hypochondriacs that love the shitty shaky feeling from the epipen and the giant bruise it causes.

Everyone had a great time at the party. I had a great time here alone believe it or not. I cannot sleep much when the attacks are this bad because you’re basically trying to use amphetamines to turn off the reaction along with the usual suspects in the allergen relief field. I watched a movie, read, ate my favorite left overs. I was bummed for one reason. The hostess is the same lady that teaches private art lessons and Wine and Design painting nights here and I wanted to pick her brain. Recently I bought a full box of good quality watercolors. I’m not experienced in watercolors, but in oil painting and using acrylics. Back in high school art we had a watercolor segment and I received a low grade because the teacher said I applied oil painting techniques to watercolors. After seeing a few watercolor demos on the Arts and Culture channel I decided to give it another shot.

It’s what I did this afternoon. What I learned, you have to have a lighter hand with color because if you don’t thin your watercolors down enough you’ll end up with some very intense colors. You have to let layers dry before painting anything adjacent to them. I made a few goofups, but all in all it wasn’t too bad for a first try. Tomorrow I’m going to add in some acrylic details. I don’t see why we cannot mix the mediums and do it any way we please. I may also use a few pastels and pencils to sharpen up the details.

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