A few days after my surgery on August 21, I woke up in the middle of the night with uncontrollable itching in my scalp.  I scratched and scratched until it woke up Gerald.  For some reason, this itching could not be soothed..didn't know where it came from...it just happened.  The next night, Sunday, August 26, 2007, the same thing happened.  This time, Gerald was snoring, so I scratched to my hearts content, but it was very puzzling that the itch could not be satisfied.  I woke up the next morning and realized that on my back were "whelps".  It kinda looked like small mosquito bites all over.  OK...this was odd. I called my surgeon and asked him if I could have possibly had an allergic reaction from anesthesia or antibiotics that they had given me.  He told me that it probably was not a reaction to the surgery, so I called my primary doctor and made an appointment for that Wednesday.  I went for my appointment and they did see the skin whelps, but could not determine what it was from.  Perhaps it was an allergic reaction...I told them that it couldn't be cause it started from something "inside" of me.  They prescribed a steroid for the whelps, some cream for itching and some type of pill for inflammation.  OK. Fine.  I take all of this medicine and it appears to be working until....the day I STOP taking it. The very next day after my steroid pack was gone, the whelps reappeared.  OK...I'm not happy at all about this.  I call them back and tell them that I must come back cause something ain't right.  It ain't no allergic reaction to nothin!  I go back in and they can not determine what is going on with me.  By this time, the whelps would appear on one body part during the day and by night, they'd be somewhere else.  I'd wake up and it would be on my torso or shoulder and by night it would be on my back or legs or thighs and they seemed to get larger and more inflammed.  My doctor took blood samples and tested me for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis...(gosh..this is enough already) and I got a prescription for some other type of medicine and a referral to see a dermatologist.

OK...I REALLY did not think a dermatologist was the answer, cause this was, after all, something "inside" of me.  I just felt it and apparently, whatever it was, was not lethal..cause I was still here.  I schedule a day to see the dermatologist, which was two weeks away and in the meantime, I dealt with this mysterious hopping skin inflammation.  One of my coworkers suggested that perhaps I was stressed out and the whelps were my body's way of releasing the stress.  Who me?  Stressed out?  Uhm....nah.  I mean, I had a lot on my plate in addition to this breast cancer issue, but I thought I was handling it all in stride.

The skin issue plagued me until two days before I was scheduled to see the dermatologist.  So naturally, on the day I was to go, I called them to let them know that nothing was there and that perhaps I should reschedule so that they could see what I was seeing.  I just didn't want to drive to the other side of town for them to tell me that they couldn't help me cause my skin was clear.  Anyway, they told me to come in and when I came in and described my ailment, they looked at me, like they knew exactly what I was talking about and told me that I had HIVES.  HIVES??!!!  (What in the world is hives and who actually gets them???)

Yes, I had hives and I had probably gotten them from STRESS, although you can get them from a variety of things.  Me....stressed?  I couldn't believe it! (Yes, even after all this, you'd think I would accept whatever they tell me without question, but I really thought I had my stress under control.)   They prescribed some Atarax, which I later realized was the same stuff I had at home that didn't work.

I called my surgeon to see if I could take the Atarax or wait till after surgery and he told me it was ok. (This all happened on Friday, September 22, 2007 - 4 days before my scheduled mastectomy.) I was telling him that they thought I was stressed out and I'm sure I went on and on in my "woe is me" mode and he in his usual calm manner, just listened and then he asked me if I practiced any form of meditation. (You mean "Nom Yo Ho Rein De Qu" meditation?, I thought to myself. )  Uhm....I have a regular prayer life...I offered.  No...he meant did I practice meditation in the form of clearing my mind of everything....both good and bad.  Uhm...no.....I don't.  We talk about prayer and meditation and he suggested that I could perhaps benefit from taking a class or reading a book on learning how to do it and he shared one of his personal stories with me about a turning point in his life and briefly, I felt better.

It wasn't until I hung up the phone with him that this dread came over me all over again.  How could I succomb to stress so bad that my body would break out into whelps all over the place and I have absolutely no control over it?  This was some real stuff going on!  What was really happening to me? {For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places - Ephesians 6:12 Thanks Sis. S. Smith}  I felt so vulnerable and it was not pretty.  My emotions were all over the place that day.  OK, I gotta get a grip.

Thank you daddy, Bubba, Nukky, Pops, Kevin, Jeannette, Jerome, Mrs. L. Glaspie, Mary Lou, Regina, Louise, LaWanda, Wee, Randy, Mark, Pam, Toni, Wilma, Kathy, KeKe, Raeshonda, Wisley....