You will remember, because it was only a week ago and we have not yet lost our minds though who could blame us if things were getting a little precarious, that about a week ago one of my feet swelled up for no reason. It swelled Friday evening, stayed swollen all Saturday, then unswelled by midday Sunday, leaving me feeling perkily relieved that I would not need to see a doctor after all, and that’s when I blogged about it. Then some of the comments on that post made me feel kind of panicky, so I decided what I would do is if my foot swelled AGAIN I would see a doctor.
Well. That’s so easy to say, when the foot isn’t swollen and one’s mood is confident and carefree as a result of feeling freshly grateful for painless walking. A week later, when my OTHER foot started swelling up, I wanted to wiggle out of that promise. I spent two hours trying to do so, but failed, particularly when the foot surpassed the level of swelling the first foot had achieved, and was seriously difficult to walk on—to the extent that I used my computer chair to roll myself to the bathroom before we left for Urgent Care. (I looked into doing a telemedicine appointment, but the screening questions left me pretty confident the doctor would want to take an actual look at this.)
The doctor at Urgent Care said he didn’t think it could be a blood clot. He said first of all, if it were a blood clot my leg would be hurting (it was not), but that also, it was Not A Thing to have a blood clot first cause swelling in one foot, and then the other. He found a large hive on my instep and diagnosed Allergic Reaction, Cause Unknown, and he gave me a dose of methypredisolone and benadryl while I was there, and a prescription for a methylprednisolone pack to start taking the next day. Methylprednisolone is a steroid. It can cause anger, insomnia, and huge appetite. Let’s check in with Swistle on Day 2 of this medication (which was last night):
The benadryl DID knock me out, for five hours; then I woke up, lay awake for an hour, and happily did get back to sleep for a couple more hours. Today I feel Fairly! Perky! Which is good, because you know how we just talked about the urge to lay in provisions. And then the U.S. president was hospitalized with Covid-19, and suddenly I was VERY VERY INTERESTED INDEED in going grocery shopping, but there I was with my STUPID FOOT, feeling I’d wasted the WHOLE week when neither foot was swollen and I could have shopped ANY TIME!! And we were low on milk! LOW ON MILK!!!
But! The medications have been working beautifully: even yesterday I could walk almost normally/comfortably, and today I can walk without thinking about it at all, so I went to the store. They still didn’t have baking chocolate. And they did not have Diet Mtn Dew (until writing this post, I did not know it was “Mtn Dew” and not “Mt. Dew”), and that is one of Paul’s Emotional Support Foods so I am feeling a little anxious about that, especially because they were LOW on Diet Mtn Dew for the last several trips, so it seems like it’s not just a brief hiccup. Fortunately, that lowness had inspired me to get an extra 12-pack each time, so we’re okay FOR NOW.
And I got LOTS of milk, and plenty of eggs, and got us re-upped on all the normal things we use (cheese! yogurt! bread! meat! french fries!), and got a bag of new fall apples even though we still had a nearly-full bag of new fall apples, so now I feel better.
Oooh boy, benadryl and steriods. So you can be groggy and wired at the same time!
Hoping they do the job and you are better soon.
Glad to hear that you seem to be on the mend! On the thought of provisioning: is this steroid the sort of thing that you can get a refill prescription for so that you can access the treatment without seeing an MD, should you experience a recurrence? Are you considering seeing an allergist?
My Husband’s Emotional Support food is Coke Zero and it has been SO hard to find!! I identified deeply with this post.
What is going on with Coke Zero? I haven’t been able to get it for a few weeks. My husband found some at a random Target yesterday and I was so grateful.
It’s not about Coke Zero or Mountain Dew specifically– there’s an aluminum shortage that’s affecting canned drink supplies. I remember reading that it was coming within the last few months. With people being work-from-home, canned beverage use has skyrocketed.
I warned my husband about it when I first read about it: his emotional support beverage is canned diet coke. I ask for it in each grocery order (where they are limiting # per order like they used to do with milk and it’s often unavailable) and am also picking it up when I find it at Costco (which seems to have it about 1/3 of the times I go). He’s also gotten on board with chilled coffee as a substitute– I typically make extra coffee in the morning and put it in the refrigerator, and he drinks that during the day. We haven’t gotten down to no diet coke in the house for him yet–he’s still having some each day–but the chilled coffee is helping him feel better about rationing. And helping him feel better about the possibility that there may come a no-diet-coke day at some point.
The aluminum shortage means that companies are using the limited supply they have on their key, biggest selling variation. So Coke is making mostly Coke and Diet Coke, Sprite, etc. to keep the biggest proportion of their customer base happy. No or almost no Coke Zero, no caffeine-free Diet Coke, etc. is being made. This is affecting the supply in the big plastic bottles too – the bottles are available for filling, unlike the cans, but often the production lines aren’t making the beverage at all.
If you like one of these less popular drinks and see it, stock up because it might disappear entirely for awhile.
Do you have any leads on what caused your allergic reaction? That seems dramatic and very inconvenient. Glad you are doing better
I am not a doctor and am just sharing my experience but I have chronic hives (urticaria) that I started getting right after I had my twins, so in 2013. It started with my feet being so painfully swollen that I couldn’t walk on them, and I figured it was something we had used to treat our lawn b/c it was summer and I had been walking barefoot. Anyway, in my case there is no actual allergy, just hives at random almost every day. I will say getting them on my feet/hands does really hurt more than some other places so you have my empathy!
My mom started getting chemo a couple months ago and for the first one they gave her an IV steroid. She FELT GREAT. She said she did all her laundry in one day (my parents are 75, this is a very rare occurrence) and baked some things as well. It lasted a couple days.
I’m sorry you are going through this, hives on the feet does sound very painful. I got hand/foot/mouth disease when my daughter was a baby and my feet were awful. Only for a weekend, but it is still so memorable.
I tried to get canned pumpkin this weekend after the comments on the last Stock Up post, and my grocery store had NONE. They carry it all year ’round, and at this time of the year generally have massive displays of Pumpkin Themed Everything and Baking Supplies Centered on Pumpkin and now I am panicked and unsettled.
(I am so glad the foot meds are working well, and that the dr’s visit was [it sounds like] both relatively easy and worthwhile!)
I found it at Aldi, in case you have one to check.
I would like some steroids just to try. (That’s it. That’s the comment.)