Chronic Hives & Hurricane Ian

In the past years I've always struggled with the triggers. Finding the triggers, finding answers and try to make it as comfortable as possible. But what I never knew is that stress can be such a huge trigger. What I've seen the past days on my body was awful. I knew immediately that I was stressing out!

It all started when I was walking in the store to do some regular shopping and the lady at the door asked me why I didn't bought any water. I saw some things in the news, but when you are in your local store and you see a lot of people freaking out, you know that it's real! When she asked me if I don't have water, I asked her what is going on. She then said: "You don't know? The hurricane is coming next week!"

Huge, red and itching

That same night I started to develop a lot of extreme hives and doubled my medication, because nothing was helping me. I didn't knew what to do because of the itching, burning experience over my whole body.

I've tried to manage how I respond to difficult situations, because my hives are always ready to pop up. But this time it was different. I was so stressed out, I felt insecure, anxious, scared, and as a mom I felt guilty that I had brought my little princess in this situation. I believe that the helpless feeling as a mom, was the worst trigger ever.

When I first heard of Hurricane Ian it didn't looked bad for our area. I was planning to drive to another state to make sure my princess is ok. But after looking at the facts, that wasn't necessary. So I decided to stay home and purchase a lot of food, water, fun things to do for my daughter and prepared the both of us for power outages.

Changing route, changing life

At a certain point everything changed, and the hurricane changed his route, and we were now in a much different situation like the days before. But now it was too late to start driving. And that feeling of "what if" was killing me inside.  During the time that we've had the hard winds and rain, I decided to let my daughter go to bed early so she doesn't have to experience the crazy situation. As an adult you want to protect your kids from all the craziness. But at this moment, I knew...... I can't protect her like I want to.

While I was waiting for Hurricane Ian to pass, I was also trying to manage the furious hives doing crazy things. I decided to look for some distraction.

• I spoke to my brother, who is funny and made me laugh a lot
• I was trying to manage my breathing
• Watching some nice movies, made my time go a little bit faster
• Start looking for a nice vacation to go for my birthday
• Praying! Praying! Praying!

Thank God, everything went well. We are safe, she is safe and it didn't traumatize her. But what I've learned during this time is that I need to listen to my inner voice when situations like this are happening! Next time I will make sure that I do it differently. Not only for my daughter, but also for myself.

I hope that everybody who is affected by Hurricane Ian will recover soon and I'm praying for all the families.