rootofnewt | Mar. 15th, 2002

i hate hives.

i've been covered in them for two weeks. my doctor decided it was a stress reaction (i'm under stress, my immune system responds by going berserk). she's afraid to give me anything because of my allergies.

a few days ago, i noticed that my pseudoephedrine was sudafed brand. i never buy sudafed brand--it makes me nauseous and causes headaches, GI distress, etc. i stopped taking the sudafed brand and started taking the generic a long time ago, but i must've bought the name brand by mistake a couple weeks ago. i opened a generic pack a few days ago and started taking those instead.

yesterday, i discovered that sudafed contains unlabeled soy.

thank the US government. the FDA only requires ingredients above 2% of the product's volume to be listed.

i just love the food and drug labelling laws in my country. it's so nice to break out constantly, risk anaphylactic shock, and generally be miserable--all in the name of ease of labelling, privacy/copyright/secret formulae, and selling more cortisone cream.

speaking of which, i fucking hate going to the store to buy cortisone cream just to discover that the pharmacy has stopped stocking cortaid max cream, one of the only aloe-free OTC cort creams on the market.

and if that's not bad enough, i can't get RID of the hives because i break out each and every time i walk into the apartment. boy just noticed this today. i was out all day today, only itchy when i wandered into a crowd of smokers and stinky people... came home and broke out in the rash all over again. my skin is raw.

i'm so sick of this.