Well, I first encountered this about 3 years ago. We had gone camping and went to use the swimming pool. As I waded into the water and stood at waist deep, my back had started to itch…
After about 5 minutes I decided to just sit on the edge of the pool but the itching got worse and I had my husband look at my lower back and it was covered with welts…kind of like tons of mosquito bites…
I wasn’t sure what the cause was and we actually thought I had been bitten by something…..
Then there were the times that I would just carry a few tubes of crescent rolls against my arm and I would get welts that would itch….
Earlier, this year I had gone walking in the morning and had on a pair of culottes and when I arrived home, my legs were itching…I looked down on the back side of my knee and there were welts like mosquito bites….I was surprised and a little perturbed that in my fast rapid walking the mosquito’s had managed to bite me…..sigh…..
I realized about an hour later that they were not bites as they had disappeared….
Well, now lets take you to Saturday evening…the weather here is about 42, overcast and feels like snow….Tim comes home and says one of his out of state clients needs a big favor…could we go to his lake house and take the jet ski’s out of the water and bring them up to the house…the impending cold front arriving today and tomorrow would permanently damage the jet ski’s….
I was excited…it is not often that I get to ride on a jet ski, and a super fancy one…well let alone in what feels like the dead of winter….lol…. so there I was, my jeans which I haven’t worn in over 3 years….they are kept just for occasions such as this…good thing they are stretch jeans…ahem….anyways, my jeans, turtleneck, pullover sweatshirt, knit hat, ear muffs, scarf and then zip up sweatshirt over all of that and a pair of mittens….
My hubby had on a wetsuit but no gloves or hat!!!
Well we go for a ride across the fog covered lake, freezing cold to say the least, can barely see because of the rain hitting us and it is about 5pm so it is getting dark. We find our way around to the campground with the boat launch…after we sit in the water for a while trying to find the person to pick us up…who could see us in the water but we could not see him because it was too dark….and me having a phone, Tim not having his phone, but he didn’t know the guys phone number off the top of his head that was at the boat launch..lol….
I wasn’t in the water at all, just in the cold weather…well when we got back to the house to put the jet ski’s away and I was able to go change into my skirt….from my waist down, I was covered in welts and huge masses of redness…. Not more than two minutes after I had gotten out of the nice warm truck and walked around the back of the house to check on the jet ski’s my legs had started to itch!!
So that finally got me to do a search on the internet for hives and cold….well sure enough….I have a cold allergy….Cold urticaria.
I did the ice cube test…you hold an ice cube against your arm for 5 minutes….normal people….might just have a slight red mark after they remove the ice cube….if you are like me…then you get welts….as seen below…
This first picture is before the ice cube is applied.
Next picture is after keeping the ice cube on for 5 minutes.
This next one is after the ice cube was off for one minute. There is a slight bumpy look over the red area, there is the start of the development of bumps on the upper edge of the red area and the very bottom
Eighteen minutes after the ice had been removed this is what my arm looks like. The left side which you can hardly see is all raised up and the right you can see around the outline is raised as well. So you can kind of imagine what I must have looked like when I saw my legs were entirely covered!!!
An hour later, the welts are gone but there is still discoloration where the mark was.
This morning taking my son to speech therapy…from the time we walked from the car in the guest parking lot at the elementary school into the building…what a 30 sec. to minute walk….I had the hives…not like the other night, but they would have gotten worse had I just stood outside…..
So, anyone else allergic to the cold???
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