My scariest health scare in a while...

Physically and mentally I have had a really hard time lately. In June or July, my doctor took me off of my blood pressure medication.  My body and my brain have been going through an absolute mess ever since.

The blood pressure medication was discontinued because of an allergy. My face started swelling up. This probably started in 2019, and was mostly just the left side of my face on my jaw. There would be a strange feeling, then a lump, then a little bit of swelling. I finally broke down around January or February of 2020 and finally went to the urgent care doctor that could see me and they diagnosed me with a blocked salivary gland. Try to eat less sodium-- and hey, while you're at it, work on losing some weight. To help activate the salivary glands, why not suck on some hard candies. 

The swelling continued, without any explanation, and sometimes it got into my throat, which would construct as if I had tonsillitis or something. We were told that it was a food allergy, so let's do an allergy diet. Constrict a food, see if that helps. I got rid of cinnamon and mangos and watermelon and lettuce and a few others that I honestly can't remember.  I introduced them back in to no reaction, so continued to eat them. 

I tried that, and for a while, it seemed to work a little bit. Then, sometime during the pandemic, I would guess winter of 2020, I had a major episode. My face started to swell, but this time, it wasn't just my face, but my throat completely closed off as well. I stopped being able to breathe through my mouth. I couldn't breathe if I was laying down. I could sit up with a TON of pillows behind me and my CPAP machine on and sort of breathe that way, but if I laid down at all, everything was completely constricted. Because of the pandemic, the thought of going to the emergency room by myself caused a severe anxiety attack, so I waited it out. The swelling went down, but I decided I was done with this.

I contacted my doctor again, wondering if this could be some kind of autoimmune disease or something strange, and she sent me in for tests.  Nothing too exciting came back. I had some elevated things and some low things. Then on January 20th, Inauguration Day, I woke up at midnight to the itching and swelling -- again.  I posted a picture to my Facebook, joking about how my face was so proud that Biden was President it had swelled right up.

Ultimately, we found out that it was an allergy to a medication. I stopped taking the medication and almost immediately lost 25 pounds.  I found most of it again, since I'm not moving as much as I should, and also because of all of the testing and medical stuff found out that I have some tumors on my hip, arthritis in my back and lymphedema in my legs. 

I don't make resolutions. I'm bad at keeping them, as most people are, so I'm going to leave this here to think about and to encourage myself and others to take better care of themselves. I'm tired of being scared.