![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naming the puffy
Jul. 21st, 2007 05:57 pmIt's called angioedema.
I would not recommend reading the Wikipedia entry on it, as that makes it sound like a violent, agonizing, frequently fatal immune collapse, when as far as I can gather from other sites it is generally a non-life-threatening allergic reaction on the same spectrum as hives -- in essence, your face is one big hive. Also, what happened to me is in no wise as severe as what I saw in the pictures posted to the web. It may not even be angioedema in the strict sense, but what the doctor described sounds remarkably like what happened.
My doctor is excellent. He is always kind and considerate and he figures things out that other doctors don't seem to.
He thinks it's stress, and I have to admit that makes sense. I tend to have an inflammatory reaction to emotional duress. When I left my evil ex many years ago, and went home to visit my parents, I developed a violent case of hives that endured for over a week, and for months afterwards I'd get random swelling in irritated areas of skin at stressful times. It went away after a while. and I stopped consciously expecting it as a stress reaction. I think part of what alarmed me so much about this (other than its idiopathy) was that it reminded me of that time, and how out of control everything felt.
The thing is, though, okay, the thing is you should not look up your diagnoses on the Internet. Because then you will find a single reference to people dying during dental surgery of the most severe hereditary form of the thing, and you will think about your dentist appointment on Tuesday, and you will not sleep at all well.
{rf}
I would not recommend reading the Wikipedia entry on it, as that makes it sound like a violent, agonizing, frequently fatal immune collapse, when as far as I can gather from other sites it is generally a non-life-threatening allergic reaction on the same spectrum as hives -- in essence, your face is one big hive. Also, what happened to me is in no wise as severe as what I saw in the pictures posted to the web. It may not even be angioedema in the strict sense, but what the doctor described sounds remarkably like what happened.
My doctor is excellent. He is always kind and considerate and he figures things out that other doctors don't seem to.
He thinks it's stress, and I have to admit that makes sense. I tend to have an inflammatory reaction to emotional duress. When I left my evil ex many years ago, and went home to visit my parents, I developed a violent case of hives that endured for over a week, and for months afterwards I'd get random swelling in irritated areas of skin at stressful times. It went away after a while. and I stopped consciously expecting it as a stress reaction. I think part of what alarmed me so much about this (other than its idiopathy) was that it reminded me of that time, and how out of control everything felt.
The thing is, though, okay, the thing is you should not look up your diagnoses on the Internet. Because then you will find a single reference to people dying during dental surgery of the most severe hereditary form of the thing, and you will think about your dentist appointment on Tuesday, and you will not sleep at all well.
{rf}
