Note: update on my health, no worms involved
I had an allergic reaction to the ciprofloxacin that I was taking to battle my post-hookworm war infection. I've had a similar reaction to cheap bandaid adhesive where the "spot" or in this case my hands, delivered an itchy rash consisting of tiny blistery bumps. Quite a nuisance when you consider how much you use your hands and it made it uncomfortable to move them. I couldn't think of anything new that I had touched and found on a list of rare side effects (pick me!) that ciprofloxacin can cause various skin reactions including rashes and sensitivity to sun. After three days of antibiotics, I went back to my lovely doctor who prescribed me a strong antihistamine, Piritin, recommended using my Fourderm cream on it and approved my decision to stop taking the meds. I took Friday off because after the first dose of Piritin knocking me out, it seemed to have the opposite effective of keeping me up so I didn't sleep at all on Thursday night.
On Saturday, I was flipping through a book I had found at work entitled "In the village where there is no doctor" which is essentially a how-to book for locations where there is no doctors (go figure from the title) and looked up skin rashes. At which point I diagnosed myself with scabies and freaked out. The thing with scabies is that it looks like an allergic reaction and has key areas/patterns that it develops, including on the hands, starting between the fingers. Um, pick me!? I couldn't tell whether my allergic reaction was getting worse or better on Saturday having stopped the meds for two days, and still experiencing crazy itch. A panic phone call to my sister to google more information for me helped me make a plan.
Luckily, starting on Sunday and continuing, the itch has gone and the rash is fading. False alarm, knock on wood. Whew.
Note to self: allergic to ciprofloxacin. Here's hoping I don't have any gastrointestinal problems because it's the antibiotic that travel doctors prescribe to you to take with you, just in case. If anyone is interested, I have a good supply that I probably shouldn't use.
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Scabies would not have been the worst thing ever (I had it at OLM for along time and no one else got it - pick me!), but it really would have sucked to have scabies and worms. That might have been horrible. Allergic to Cipro eh? Very random, like the red dye thing. Ok, there are some other powerful antibiotics on the market that superbugs aren't quite resistant to yet, but I hope, for your sake, that some new ones come out quickly! This could be an issue when you want to travel again, which I assume is not in the too far distant future, yeah? Glad to know it was a false alarm, very good. To the next post!!
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