It seems like when I first got cholinergic urticaria, I hardly ever had attacks in my sleep. In fact, over the past 3 years it hasn’t happened too often. Lately, however, it seems to be a relatively common occurrence. It is very annoying!
Hives in My Sleep
Just take last night for instance. I had felt great all day, and even worked out (which I haven’t done in a while). While working out, I barely got a few pricklies, but nothing terrible (of course I didn’t sweat though). So I felt pretty good. It was also a little warmer in the apartment (about 62 degrees compared to a chilly 53 of last week).
Anyways, all was well and I went to sleep. Then, at 12:30 am, my eyes opened in the darkness of the night. I felt something was wrong. My body was warm, and then BAM, it hit me. It was one of the worst attacks I have had in a while. It completely radiated all through my body, and even my thighs and lower legs were itching like crazy.
So I jumped out of bed to get a drink of cold water hoping that it would pass. Wrong. I had to sit in my living room and scratch the crap out of myself for like 10 minutes straight. My chest was really red, I had scratch marks all over me. I even scratched a small pimple on my back and it started bleeding.
My wife was asleep the whole time this was going on (she had to get up very early for school today). So I sat in there until the reaction finally quit. It drained me. Finally I came back into the bedroom to try and get some sleep.
I laid in bed about an hour, but I just couldn’t force myself to fall asleep. My skin just felt icky or something. Even though I was drained, my mind was still alert. So I eventually got back up and stayed up the entire night surfing the web. I finally was able to fall asleep at like 8:00 this morning after my wife left for school, and I slept for about 2 hours. Needless to say, I have felt like absolute crap today. As if having hives throughout almost every day wasn’t bad enough, now I am being haunted by them at night as well. I hate these itchy hives!
Vitamin D3 Supplement Update:
As I mentioned in a previous post , I am trying a vitamin d-3 to see if it has any effect on my hives. I started taking them on Jan. 20th, so not yet quite a week. I really can’t say I notice any difference at all. I am sure they probably will do nothing, but I will continue taking them for about a month or two just to know for sure and mark it off of my “list”.
I just hope and pray to God that we all get rid of this dreadful condition soon.
UPDATE: 1/21/13 This is an old archived post, and I have made more recent posts regarding my new diet and how I was able to finally get my hives under control. Read more about it on my cholinergic urticaria diet page. What I essentially did was keep a journal and do several allergy elimination diets.