Evil Advil

So it took me a while to figure it out, but apparently an Ibuprofen allergy is what’s responsible for my face looking like this. It’s something that developed over time — I’ve been taking Advil forever — so I didn’t immediately suspect it. But I finally put all the pieces together today. Every time my eyes swell I take photos so that I can show them to a doctor someday when I’m able to afford health insurance. Glad I didn’t have to wait that long…

It happens at the most inconvenient times. Earlier this month when I was headed up to NYC for a TV taping, the photo in the middle happened. Yeah, I had to be on camera that afternoon. It wasn’t pretty. Literally. At first I’d struggled to figure out what foods might have caused this reaction. And when I couldn’t find any commonalities, I’d written it off to stress. The pic on the left happened on the day my trifling ass “tenant” (quotations because actual tenants pay rent) “returned” these keys to me during the eviction process:

Why would that be stressful, EJ? That sounds like a good thing.

They were not my keys.

On the day of the second photo, I was also dealing with some drama about renting my condo and thought “Gosh, this whole being a landlord thing is really stressing me out.” I was kinda right. Because the situation spawned the headache that made me take the Advil.

But today I was stress free when I felt my face start to tingle about 30 minutes after taking something for a sinus headache. I finally put 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 (this happened once before in February when I threw my back out) together. I started Googling for Ibuprofen allergies and allergic reactions and I found my face! Well, not my face specifically but it was definitely my face. I felt like a super sleuth. I was more proud of myself for solving the case than I was glad I could prevent this from happening in the future.

As a reward for all my hard detective-ing (and to de-puff my eyes of course) I treated myself to a nice double dose of Benadryl and called it a day. At about 3pm. I’m just now waking up. And now I’m going back to sleep.

Not sure why I feel like you all needed to know all this, but I do. You’re welcome.