Allergic reaction

If you know me well, you know I have suffered with allergies my whole life. But this past weekend I learned I had an allergy I never knew about! It was the night before Sydney's first birthday party and our friends were over playing games with us. During our game I was feeling like I needed to be doing something to prepare, so I got up to find some balloons and started blowing one up. The instant the balloon touched my mouth, I knew something was wrong. My lips started to tingle and get swollen. In the midst of all this, I had rubbed my eyes because they were itching like crazy. Not even realizing that there was a direct correlation to the balloon, I got up to take some claritin thinking my allergies were just bothering me for some reason. I sat back down and just felt awful. In between plays, I sat with my hands in my head because I was getting a headache and was having difficulty breathing. Meanwhile, Steve and our friends had no idea what was even happening to me. My friend said she looked at me and saw that my eyes were a little red but didn't think much of it. She looked down at her cards to make her play and within only 2 minutes when she looked back at me, I looked completely different. My eyes were completely swollen, red and watery, my mouth was swollen and my hand had welts on it!

Steve immediately went to the computer to look up latex allergy once we realized it was from the balloon (not sure why it took me that long to realize it!!) He said I needed to take Benadryl immediately. Of course we didn't have any, so our friend ran down the road to his parents' house to get some from them (it was 10 pm at this point!) Once I took the Benadryl, I began to feel a little better, but for awhile there we were certain we would be making a trip to the ER. Turns out, from what Steve read online, a latex allergy is developed over time, which is why I had never reacted in the past. It's also very serious!

The picture below doesn't do justice to what I looked like when it first happened, since this was post Benadryl, but you get the idea:

I'm just so thankful it happened when our friends were around, who so kindly stayed until after midnight just to make sure I was okay. We played one more game and let our boys watch TV (they were happy!) and they also helped me put together the goody bags for the party the next day. So now I have to go get tested to find out for sure about this new allergy!