My spots

Since I've been bitching about that article and the absolutely ridiculous statement that urticaria pigmentosa may turn into cancer, I figured I may as well write about my own a little urticaria pigmentosas.

Today I went to see my doctor, and they had an intern in, as well as a fellow. They were both very excited to see an ISM patient, as even though my doctor sees a lot, we all have different stories, different reactions, different presentations. So we went over my medical history and I stressed to both of them how painful and grueling the whole process of getting diagnosed was, and what a fluke it was for the doctor who picked it up. I stressed that patients who suddenly come down with massive anxiety disorders with no exogenous stimulus should be looked at more closely.

I never wrote about what happened to me the week in which I was diagnosed because it is incredibly painful to relive, but it included being told I had a severe anxiety disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, a noro-virus coupled with anxiety disorder and temporal lobe epilepsy, some other form of epilepsy, ms, potential hypochondria before finally it was decided I needed to be locked in a psych evaluation room for 12 hours under sedation because they could not keep my tachycardia under control and were convinced it was anxiety even though I was vomiting blood (which would later be attributed to the stomach damage I incurred from all the histamines that were flooding my body). There's a lot more to it, but I really don't want to get into details. It was horrible, honestly one of the worst experiences of my life. I am sure that many of you reading this who have mastocytosis can relate. The baffled doctors, the unclear medical tests, being told it is psychological when blood test after blood test comes out skewed. It's a story that many of us can tell sadly.

A few days later I noticed really odd mottling across the skin of my stomach so I made an appointment to see a dermatologist. While examining the mottled skin on my stomach, he noted that I had a lot of freckles on my back and torso. I told him that yeah, they'd been popping up over the past few years, that prior to that my skin was relatively flawless, but I'd had one biopsied to make sure it wasn't cancer, and it wasn't, and that i wasn't thrilled with how they looked cosmetically but I really didn't care. He scratched one, waited a moment, and then told me about mastocytosis. The only reason he was so well versed in it is because he works shifts at Children's Hospital, and this disease is more common in children. He immediately drew a ton of blood, did a 24 hour urine histamine, referred me to my specialist, and the rest, as they say, is history.

But, I figure I may as well show you what I've been talking about. This is a photo of my back. None of the freckles are freckles. They are all clusters of mast cells that show up in a cutaneous manifestation. One of the ones on the right had been intentionally irritated so as to show Darier's sign. In other words, it released a ton of histamines into my system. However, since I'm on so many meds, my reaction is pretty localized. I won't lie, I feel like hell after they do it, but I'm glad to suffer it to teach another doctor about a disease so infrequently seen.

So this is it, the real visible physical manifestation that I am not well. It's honestly hard for me to post this, because while I know it's not a real deformity, and I'm currently getting off pretty easy compared to many people with mastocytosis or urticaria pigmentosa, it's hard for me to look at, or show off, because it looks so unlike me. A few years ago the skin on my body was spotless, and now i'm turning into a leopard. but i guess that's a pretty good animal for the first thing to pop into mind, so maybe i can pretend i have that strength as well.



(for the record, I adjusted the contrast on this a bit because the room was very bright at the photo came out a bit washed out. This is also a few minutes after the Darier's sign had been activated and was starting to calm down)