Allergy Testing

Sorry for the Pictures you are just going to have to turn your head!

As many of you know, I have been very frustrated with really just one thing that seems to NEVER go away......My left ear has been plugged for over 2 1/2 years. And it just never seems to ever want to pop. Talk about FRUSTRATING!! I can hear out of it, it just sounds cloudy. To kinda give you an idea of what I hear....put your hand over you mouth in a fist and talk in it. That's what it sounds like in my left ear. To make things worse I can't sleep on my left side because it plugs my ear more. Then it takes me half the day trying to get it to were it normally is.

I have tried to go to a doctor up here in Rexburg, but he didn't do much at all. Then I heard of a doctor in IF and he is great. The first time I saw him he hadn't heard of this at all. An ear being plugged for this long. He said that we are going to try a lot of different things until we find out what is making it so it wont un-plug. So we have tried a number of different things and yet nothing has worked. He did a scope through my nose to get to my ears and found out that I had massive swelling. Not good news. He then wanted me to take an Allergy Test to see if I was allergic to anything and that was the reason for it not popping.

The Allergy Test was not really like I thought it was going to be. I get there and the nurse pulls out 6 trays full of little bottles. She then grabs a hand full of shots. She gives me 5 shots to start off with. They aren't fun to get. Just to give her an idea of the reactions that I might have. It could have been worse. I felt burning and itchy......real bad....I really wanted to scratch my arm so bad but I couldn't. This is the after getting the first shots......



Then came the first round of shots... What they do is they give you a dosage of everything. Meaning cotton, grass, sage weed, rag weed, pollin....ect. Then if you have a big enough reaction they stop. But if you don't then they give you a higher dosage until you have a reaction, and if they give you the highest dosage that they have and you still didn't have a reaction then you aren't allergic. I thought that I wasn't going to have that big of a reaction, and I was right..all it was was more burning and me wanted to scratch it nothing new from the first 5.....





Until the second round of shots came. Let me tell ya....NOT FUN. After she gave me the shots she left the room for ten min. to see if I had a reaction. The doctor came in and we joked it was fun. I was having more of a reaction (which is good and bad. Good for we aren't just throwing away money for no reactions, and bad because we now know that I am allergic to something). Then the Nurse came in just a couple of minutes later. Good thing too. While she was taking the measurments I was starting to have a hard time breathing and started to develop a cough. I wasn't looking like my self so she had the doctor come in right away. He said I just talked to you a little ago and you don't look good anymore. While she is doing this I am now Wheezing for air and coughing non stop. He then instructed the Nurse to give me a couple Antihistamines right away, have me take a couple "puffs" of an inhaler, and to give me an epi pen. Yep that's right, thats how bad of an reaction I had to the Allergy Test. After this kind of reaction, they stopped the test and are going to have me come back another day to finish it. This time getting tested for Dusts and Molds....YEA! They said that they get this kind of bad reaction once maybe twice a year. Lucky me, I was their one this year! Hopefully I will try to not make it two!



After all this I ended up getting 55 shots just in my right arm. I hope that with finishing the test I wont end up have 55 more in my left arm!