Allergy Appointment and the Day Doesn’t Go as Planned

Tuesday March 22, 2016 Guerneville CA.

The day of my allergy appointment

Today was finally here. The day of my allergy appointment at nine AM.

I was on time and there waiting for the Doctor to arrive for work at nine.

Allergy skin tests

They stuck me in this room for the appointment. The idea was they would do some allergy testing on me on my skin. But as soon as the doc saw me without a shirt, she said, no way we can find enough room to do the skin testing. Darn and after I’d given up antihistamines for seven days so we could do it and I suffered a bunch without the antihistamines.

This was the room I was in for the skin tests. Not much in the room.

My displeasure

I mumbled something about my displeasure of not getting any skin tests after suffering holding off on the antihistamines for a week and she said she could do a few of them for me and which ones would I like.

I said corn, of course and rice, beans, oranges, and white potato as I thought I’d gotten hit from all these things recently, but I thought that some thing else might be making these foods look bad, so I thought I’d check them out.

Skin tests

The nurse came in and labeled my arm then made the pin pricks with the different substances.

Nothing tests positive

She said we’d have to wait ten or fifteen minutes for any reactions to take place. The first one on the left is the control that should show a red spot and it did, but none of the others did. She said I wasn’t allergic to any of those things. I was expecting that from doing some reading on the  internet, so it wasn’t really a surprise. Turns out corn is a tricky one and lots of times doesn’t show up as bad. Although, it would be nice if I wasn’t allergic to corn stuff, so that would be great if it was true, but I think it just didn’t pick it up, but I’ll keep testing on my own.

Here’s the arm with the tests on it after the wait period. Note the one of the far left has a red bump under it as it’s the control and it better have a red bump on it to show the test was working properly. The other small red spots are just from the pin pricks and did not respond to the tests.

The tests were very useful to me even if they were limited to just a few things as those few things were foods I thought I had reactions to, but know I shouldn’t be reacting to these foods, so having them not show positive was a good thing as it confirmed what I already knew. It’s hard to determine which foods are making me itch.

Need to see a dermatologist

The allergy Doc said you need to see a dermatologist right away and suggested one that took patients in without an appointment. I said I’m with the VA and I likely should get back in their system as I figured I’d be doing some business with the dermatologist more than once.

The only problem, I didn’t have an appointment and their clinic usually doesn’t do much unless you do, unless it’s a real emergency.

I told the allergy Doc I’d just drive on over to the VA clinic and face them with it, so I drove the few miles over to the VA clinic getting there just after ten AM.

VA clinic front desk

I went to the front desk and explained my situation and they responded by calling my doctors nurse out to check me out.

Unfortunately for me, two guys had showed up without appointments before me so the Dermatologist was really backed up.

They put me in this room to wait and said to go ahead and lay on the bed if you like, so I did.

Take a break

At eleven thirty, my nurse came in and said I might as well go get something to eat and take a rest in my car or whatever as the Doc wouldn’t be able to get to me before 1PM when they came back for lunch.

So I went out and sat in my car. I had put a sleeping pad in the back of my car the other day, so I was able to put that to good use.

This was my view from my car of the VA clinic.

Back in the building by one PM

I was back in the building just before one, but my nurse didn’t show up. I saw another nurse from the same area of my nurse so I got her to let me back into the Doc’s inter working area and laid down on the bed and waited for someone to get some time to deal with me.

This was my view as I waited on the bed.

Documenting with pictures

About 1:30 two nurses came in and took pictures of my rashes. Drop your pants please. The photos where put in the records to compare in a couple weeks to see how things are going, getting better or worse? Copies were also sent down to San Francisco VA to the big dermatologists guys at the head office.

Three PM and the dermatologist gets time

About three PM, my dermatologist finally got time to see me. She looks things over and says this doesn’t look like hives to her and maybe you have two things going on. She suggested we try to treat it with some antifungal stuff to see if any of the rashes are fungal for a start. She said I’d have to use the antifungal stuff daily for a week, then come back and see her and we’d go from there if they weren’t fungal. I’m pretty sure they are not fungal from my own experience, but I decided to roll with her and do it her way for now.

She said she would have the medicine mailed to me and I was out of there around four PM.

The day didn’t go as planned, but the day went and now I’m at least started in the system with this thing so we’ll see how it goes.

I drove on home stopping at Ray’s house to give him a report and then went on home where the clock was just striking 5PM.

That was my day.