Got Blood In My Eyes For You…

Okay, not blood, and not IN my eyes, but I definitely have some red stuff going on in the ocular area.

One of my favorite bloggers has the occasional problem with red weals under her eyes.  For as long as I've been reading her blog, I've thought to myself, "Ah, that sounds horrible.  So glad it's not me, teehee!"  And for a long time, it wasn't.

But alas, dear reader, I should not have been so smug.  It all started sometime in early November– the skin around my eyes and laugh lines started getting really, REALLY dry. Red and scaly. Then one day while at work, I felt a warm, itchy, strange sensation under one of my eyes.  I went into the restroom to discover I had a hive under my eye.  Now, as far as some hives I've seen on other people go, it wasn't that big; but to me, to me it seemed to cover my whole face and the itching would not stop.

Luckily, I was going to the dermatologist the next day.  The hive was gone by then, but the patchy dry scaly spots were not. She suggested that I switch to a super-mild face wash, decrease the frequency that I apply Differin gel (was nearly every night, she suggested once/week), and she gave me a steroid cream to apply (though I was instructed not to apply it more than two days in a row).

Now I use the super-mild face wash and also this Hope In A Jar stuff I've had for a while (it is uber-moisturizing) twice a day, plus the mineral veil powder during the day.  And I STILL have been getting the hives under and beside both of my eyes, about every three or four days.  The only thing I can figure is that I've developed some sort of allergy that I didn't have before, because I looked hives and weals and such online and it said they were caused by histamines (which in turn are caused by allergies and stress).  The steroid cream works, but only staves them off for a couple of days.

I'm really hoping that this will all be a bad nightmare come summertime.  What about you?  Ever get any mysterious hives/weals/rashes?  Keep it above the waist, folks ; )