Behold the Mighty Hunter

mighty hunter
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Nancy's comments from my last post reminded me of something:

I was tested twice for allergens - once when I was very young (4? 5?), and once recently, a few months after I gave birth. When I was very young I remembered the skin tests were all done with reusable syringes - it was that long ago - and my mom told me that I went into anaphylactic shock when I was tested against horses.

With this new round of testing, the nurse used these things that looked kind of like the things they use to poke you in the finger for just a little blood. Except in this case she was poking me in the arm, on a grid she drew with a ball-point pen. She was poking away when I finally got curious and actually looked at her little case with all the pokers and read the labels and saw one labelled "horse". Eep.

I asked her "have you poked me with the horse yet?"

"Just did".

"I guess I should tell you this: when I was tested as a kid I went into anaphylactic shock when I was tested for horses."

The nurse stared at me a second, then said "Now you tell me?!??"

I didn't go into shock, but. If you are allergic to something, your skin will develop a little weal, its size depending on how allergic you are. So I had a bunch of little bumps ranging from the size of a mosquito bite to the size of a dime. The horse test, however, was the size of a silver dollar. And man did it itch!!

Here's part 3 of that nifty travel report. I note with amusement that they were the last group cancelled out of the villa that is being blogged about here.