crabs

This is how I looked like in my widest forced smile last Saturday night. We cooked the crabs we bought from a Filipino store here in coconut milk and langka (which were canned and imported from Thailand, btw). Thirty minutes after our delicious repast, while I was rinsing off the congealed coconut milk off the cooking pans, my scalp and the back of my neck started to itch. Soon enough, other small itchy vesicles appeared all through out my body. Apparently, I was allergic to crab, and I didn't notice in all my 17 years of existence.

So they rushed me to the hospital when the Claritin didn't work. We waited a while on the emergency room lobby if my situation was going to improve, but my mother decided to confine me when I started to wheeze and gasp for breath. Plus she was alarmed by my curiously purple nails.

They injected me with epinephrine (to increase my heart rate, kasi it was slowing down), benadryl (antihistamine), and steroids (to reduce swelling). The nurse said I looked like a lobster. That was the first time I was injected on my rump (it hurt a lot, btw), was hooked on an EKG, and was put on oxygen (with the tubes on my nostrils). I was so sleepy then, so they let me sleep. :-)

When I woke up, the swellings and redness had subsided, and I wasn't feeling so itchy anymore. Then, the doctor asked my mother to come because she was going to ask some questions. She said, she was expecting my mother to be much bigger and taller. Strange, my mother thought. Then she asked me, "So, you're only 7?"

It turns out my birthyear was wrongly recorded, 1998, and the doctor called my mother to ask if she'd allow me to undergo puberty tests. Because my body, obviously, wasn't that of a 7 year old, and she thought I had severe hormonal problems. Haha. Anyway. We went home at about 2:30 in the morning. I wasn't able to go to church that Sunday because my muscles hurt a lot. Too bad.



Don't worry, I'm OK now. Hehe. This is a picture of me the following day. Ugh. I don't like my haircut. A part of me insists on wearing a cap to cover my shame. But I know it doesn't matter. Hair or no hair, He loves me nevertheless. :D