Last week, my body developed itchy hives in three places on my body. One patch was on the right side of my chest, and the two other places were near both my hips. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. It started off with all three places feeling super itchy. I scratched it as one might do. The next morning, I woke up with all these places looking red, inflamed, and raised.
I didn’t know what may have caused this. I wondered if these were insect bites. If they were, from what? Due to my personal experience with bedbugs, my mind immediately went there. It didn’t make complete sense though. In the last two weeks, I’d only been to my parents place. My parents, in turn, rarely go anywhere where bedbugs might be (hotels, movie theatres, and such). They did attend a funeral however. Could this be a possibility?
The thing is, the hives didn’t look like insect bites. My chest, in particular, was just a large patch of inflamed skin. It’s been a long time now but my recollection was that my reaction to the bed bug bites were more localized. I had smaller patches of red marks, centered around the puncture sites, not large swaths of skin, like on my chest. Still, I cannot 100% rule out bed bugs just yet, though I think it’s unlikely.
My other theory was that it was an allergic reaction to something I ate. This to me also feels a bit far-fetched but still a possibility. I just don’t have allergic reactions to food. Or if I do, I haven’t discovered what those foods might be. In the last week, my diet has been consistent with what I’ve eaten normally. I ate salmon and shrimp, and I know some people have seafood allergies but I’ve eaten so much seafood in my life and it’s never been an issue. Perhaps it was something I ate and I didn’t realize I was allergic? It’s possible but again my diet has been very mundane and normal lately. Was it the Uncrustables? Am I allergic to strawberry jam, peanut butter, or hazelnut spread? I’ve had all three of those before, so this seems unlikely as well.
The good news is that since developing those three itchy red areas, no others have developed. The redness is still visible unfortunately but starting to fade away.
If these are indeed bed bug bites, I’d expect more marks to appear again in the next few days, as they come back to feed. If I see marks appear again, oh boy, it’s gonna get interesting.