Chris' Mystery Allergic Reaction Rash

Arms Feet 1 Neck Feet 2 Palms Right hand Right inside arm Left inside arm Back

Last updated: Saturday January 22, 2005 16:17 EST

(Most recent update click here)

Since I've got so many questions from my co-workers. I thought I put up a crono of what's happened to hopefully answer some of your questions. (So I don't have to tell the same story a boatload of times ;-) )

Start Date: May 20, 2002
Probable cause: Some kind of bite (tick possibly) on the lower back
Diagnosis: Undetermined (unofficially, probably Rocky Mountain spotted fever)

Sunday, May 19, 2002
May 19th, 2002 we went to Bond park by our house to take the dogs for a walk. We were off of the path in a wooded area for about 20 minutes. We did take a few live, non-attached ticks off of the dogs while still in the park. Changed clothes and showered for fear of poison ivy. No ticks in visual. No symptoms on Sunday night.

Monday May 20, 2002
Monday during the day I felt a sharp pain in the tailbone area while sitting at my desk at work and didn't think too much of it at the time. I get these "voodoo" type pains in random areas all the time. Monday night I was pretty tired so I slept upstairs in the guest room to get some decent sleep. Woke up in the middle of the night in a heavy sweat. Went to the bathroom and had pretty severe chills so bad that I was shaking. Went back to sleep with the fan on to cool down.

Tuesday May 21, 2002
I slept in until probably 10am then went to work with no real issues except being tired. Stayed up a little late to watch the hockey game (Go Canes!). I felt super tired that night.

Wednesday May 22, 2002
Had a golf outing with some people from work. Super tired. Slept in until 12 and didn't feel very well at all. It was a nice day outside so I figured I'd go anyway and maybe just getting out of the house would make me feel better. Took a shower around 12:30pm. Tee time was 2:36pm. After getting out of the shower I noticed some spots on my back only slightly irritating/itchy. About the size of a nickel. Looked like a few mosquito type bites, not a big deal. Went on to the golf course. I felt a little better but still not up to par (insert golf joke here). My golf partners knew I wasn't felling well before we started. On about the 7th hole I looked down at my left elbow area (inside) and saw these good sized (dime size or bigger) hive type rash while I was driving the golf cart. I also noticed similar but not as heavy hives on the right elbow area. At the 9th hold I decided that things were not going well (although I did get a par on the 9th) and I was going to go home. It was about 5pm at this time. I figured that somehow I had poison ivy (never had it before so didn't know what to expect). So I went home and did poison ivy research on the web. Around 6:30pm the wife got home and things were getting worse in some areas but better in others. My elbow didn't look as bad on the left.. but worse on the right. So we went to get some dinner because I was super hungry. While at dinner we took the phone book to see about going to a urgent care type place to get a cortizone short for the poison ivy. Now it's about 7:30pm and we went over to the local drug store to get some cortizone to see if we could slow this down some. It started looking pretty bad but really didn't itch. When we got back home and the shirt and pants came off to put on the cortizone you could see these really huge (quarter size or larger) hives on the thigh area and all over my back (like the picure above but much worse). We then decided it's time to go to the ER at the hospital.

Emergency Room, Western Wake Medical Center
Went to Western Wake Medical Center and signed in at 8:22pm. Had the initial consultation and the nurse said it's not poison ivy but some kind of allergic reacton. She asked me a bunch of questions. She gave me 800mg (4 capsules) of Motrin for a my headache (even though it was only slight). Then we waited for about maybe 30 minutes before we went in the back and the doctor took a look at me. Upon initial inspection he belived it was a coxaki (something like that. sounds like cock-sacky) virus which he said is prevalent in small children. They started an IV in me and drew some blood samples. Some out of the right arm (normal sized viles) and these "huge bottle" versions out of the left arm (about the size of a toilet paper tube). The doctor would come and go and order more blood tests as he went along. They gave me Benedryl via the IV on 2 different occasions. The first time it gave me quite the buzz and things started to look better. By now the hives had spread all the way down my legs and to my feet. Still not really that itchy at this point even though it was on my entire body (yes.. entire body ;-) ). They also gave me a penecillin shot on my right hip area that really really sucked. The lady said "ok.. count to three.. one.. oh.. there we go".. and proceed to use the Friday the 13th stabbing motion with the needle and jams it into my hip. GAAAAAA! That sucked the most out of this whole ordeal (so far). At about 1:30am they decided to admit me to the hospital without still deciding what the issue was.

May 23rd, 2002 In the Hospital
I had my own room (with a view too). Being that it was 1:30am when I "checked in" I was pretty tired. I konked out right away. Then the blood work people like to wake you up all the time usually around 5am. They also started Doxycycline in the IV which seemed to help out a lot with the rash over time. So the IV was running the saline solution 24/7 and the Doxycycline 24/7. I had another spell of being in a heavy sweat in the middle of the night and having severe chills so much that I would be shaking. I had to go to the restroom often from the saline in the IV. It's kind of weird having to go to the bathroom and not really drinking anything. When I would get out of the bathroom and wash my hands they would feel funny and tingle, sometimes throb with my heart beat. Then you could really see the red spots (see above picutres of hands). Kristina got there around 9:30am ( I sent her home to get some real sleep.. no sense her sleeping in a cot in the hospital. Plus she needed to take care of the dogs). The rash would come and go in phases. This time they were not hive-like but just red spots. If you look at the pictures of my feet above you can see the "Feet 1" picture does have too much of a rash compared to the "Feet 2" picture. There was about an hour difference between when the pictures were taken. This happened in various areas on the body. Same on my stomach. It would come and go. During the day they did 4 blood tests for platelet counts. When I was admitted I have a count of 67. Today it was 93. Normal they said is from 140 to 440 range. The doctor finally came in around 2:30pm to check me out. Didn't have too much to say and the rash had gone away for the most part. Good thing I took these pictures because he didn't ever see me like this. I just wish I took pictures when we were in the ER. I also got news that I was not going home today which sucked because I was supposed to go out to California for the Memorial Day weekend.. that was boo.

May 24th, 2002 Friday
They came in at 5am again for more blood work. You don't get any rest in the hospital by the way. The doctor came in around 10 and said if the blood count (platelets) were up then I could go home today. Oh joy. Well.. they were 78. So I figured I was going to be in this for the long haul. Nice way to spend the 3 day weekend. So I called Kristina and told her to bring me the bathroom type of stuff so I could take a shower (had a shower in my bathroom in my room.. pretty nice). The doctor came back in around probably 11:45 or so and said that since I was improving (rash had pretty much gone away) that I could go home. Sweeeet. So we packed up the stuff and I was discharged around 12:30pm. First thing was to go to the pharmacy and get the Doxycycline prescription filled. Then we went for some Mexican food. That was some good stuff. Hospital food was ok but I'm a growing boy..need more food than that. ;-) When we got home I remembered that I felt that sting on my tail bone a few days before and asked Kristina (the wife) to take a look. Sure enough there was a bite area with a ring around it. Looked really similar to the bite from a tick with Lyme Disease. We took pictures of it for documentation purposes to show the doctor. The remainder of Friday was spent calling family and explaining "what's really goin' on".

May 25th, 2002 Saturday
I slept in until about 12:30pm. I was super tired. Ate some lunch.. stayed up until about 2:30pm then went back to sleep until around 5:30pm. Stayed up until 10pm. Then back to sleep. I established my medicine schedule as take 1 pill at 9am and 1 at 9pm (of the Doxycycline, 100mg).

May 26th, 2002 Sunday
Pretty much the same as Saturday but when I woke up at around noon I stayed awake all day until around 10pm. No re-occurance of the rash at all since I left the hospital.

May 27th, 2002 Monday
Same as Sunday

May 28th, 2002 Tuesday, first day back at work
Woke up around 10am. Had to do a lot of explaining to various people of what's been going on. Was super tired all day. Went home around 5pm. Went to sleep around 10pm.

May 29th, 2002 Wednesday, first doctor follow-up
Woke up around 10am. Went to work for awhile. Had a doctors appointment around 2:30pm for a follow-up visit. I took my laptop and showed the doctor the pictures that we took. At this point the blood work for the Lyme disease and the Rocky Mountin spotted fever had still not come in so no new news there. He did think that I was still "interesting" and after seeing the pictures he wanted me to see another doctor at the Raleigh Infectious Disease clinic. So the appointment was set for June 6, 2002. He also took another blood sample to check my current blood platelet count.

May 30th, 2002 - June 4, 2002
I continue to improve and sleep less. I do have a problem sleeping through the night so I take some over-the-counter sleep type pills to help me sleep all night. Those work pretty well. Over the weekend I still slept many hours and I have no problem laying down and taking a nap even though I have slept 12 hours already.

June 5th, 2002 Wednesday
Went to the infectious disease doctor today. I didn't have the laptop (left it at work the night before) so I just printed out the pictures (photo quality) to take there. This turned out to be a good idea so this way he could keep them and put them in his records. He asked a bunch of the sames kinds of questions. Looked up some things in some manuals. Had me get down to my chonies and did the breathe in/ breathe out thing while pressing on various areas on the back and stomach areas. He also inspected the bite area. He was able to find out from the previous referring doctor that the Lyme test and the Rocky Mountain spotted fever test had both come back negative. This was nice since the other doctor was supposed to call me and let me know when he found out. The infectious doctor said that even though the test came back negative that the spots on the palms of my hands and on the bottom of my feet indicate that it's probably Rocky Mountain spotted fever. He told me to quit taking the medicine since I've been taking it for 2 weeks now and that's long enough to combat Rocky Mountain spotted fever. He saw no further need at this point to do any more tests. He got the results of the platelet count from last Wednesday and the number was at 161. This is a good thing. I do feel that I've been getting stronger and require less sleep (like maybe 9 or 10 hours now) than before.

June 12th, 2002 Wednesday
Went to the doctor today for the 2 week check-up. He asked me about what the other doctor said. I said he thought that it was the Rocky Mountain spotted fever even thought the tests said it was negative. I printed out the pictures above so he could keep it in my file for future reference. I told him about how I have this pain in the middle of my stomach and how my back hurts. He asked me some questions about it and ended up giving me some Nexium (that purple pill commercial that you see on TV). He said it might be this other bacteria (that's supposedly not affiliated with the rash issue) that could be causing that. He said to take it for 2 weeks then come back to see him. If it seems to help (which I'll be most happy if it does) then he's going to run some more blood tests.

So what's next??
Next appointment is in 2 weeks. Depending on how the Nexium works out we'll see if we need to do more blood tests. He said it's possible that this is another bacteria (some long name that sounds like Helecoptor) that can cause problems.

Update: Jan 22, 2005
I still have rash issues every now and then. The doctors have never figured out what the issue was/is. I have been taking Zyrtec daily for the last few years to "suppress" the itchy feeling from coming back. If I stop taking it then I'll get some smaller annoying ichy rash on my shins and my palms and feet will also feel itchy. The winter time is also bad for itchy feeling. After I shower I have to lotion down the skin otherwise it will get really irritated. I've just learned to deal with it. It's annoying but there are other issues that are more important. See heart page.

Until next time,

-Chris

Last updated: Saturday January 22, 2005 16:17 EST