Happy Birthday to Me.

I know I'm forty because instead of planning a night out on the town or even just a special dinner with a little cake, I spent my birthday working a half day in order to get my car tag renewed so I didn't have to pay a late fee, and waiting in a doctor's office to have more blood drawn so he can tell me he doesn't know what's wrong with me. Woo hoo.

A little background: I spent the summer battling a nasty case of hives. Head to toe vicious hives that itched like crazy and would not go away unless I took a steroid that would cause kidney or liver damage if taken too long. My first real summer off from work or school in a few years, the one that I was supposed to spend by the pool reading trashy novels and doing absolutely nothing else, was spent going to see an allergist, a dermatologist, and a general practitioner. All of whom said it was probably stress. The first two prescribed steroids and various antihistamines, one of them costing a mere $100!, and the third doc took more and more blood, decided that I was anemic and my kidneys were not functioning exactly as they should, and sent me to a kidney specialist.

So I started taking a $10 iron supplement for the anemia, and lo and behold, the hives went away!  They've started coming back a little bit, but it's nothing compared to the misery I was in over the summer.  Seriously, as The Elephant Woman, I did not find myself wanting to spend time at the pool or anywhere where the general public might see me and break out the torches and pitchforks as they hid the small children, hoping to save them from life-scarring nightmares.  Anyway, over $700, four doctors, a couple of pints of blood, a kidney ultrasound, and a day of collecting my own urine later (hope you weren't in the middle of dinner there, imaginary reader), I still have some hive issues, still don't know exactly what's going on with my kidneys, and still have to go back to two of the doctors again.

If reincarnation and karma are real, I must have killed a lot of puppies in a past life.