Hives (probably more than you ever wanted to know)

I have had hives all week. This is the worst case of hives I have ever had. They began Sunday night during the Vedic Meditation intro I went to. By the time I went to bed my body was slightly swollen and very itchy. Before this last July, I had only gotten hives once and that was an allergic reaction to penicillin when I was 17 and they were only on the backs of my legs. In July I got them on my hands the morning of Victoria's baby shower and I was afraid I had some weird athlete's foot on my hands so I wore gloves to the shower. By the end of that day, they were all over me and they lasted about a week. Since then I have had them on and off but mostly just on my hands, elbows and knees. This time - kabamm. They have gotten much better since thursday.

I usually get them from stress. Now my acupuncturist thinks it may be due to a virus caught in my body. I still think their onset is stress related. This time I think my body had reaction to my starting meditation. Almost as if my body thinks it needs the stress and this is it's reaction to my deciding to start to get rid of stress. Like my body saying - "you think you are going to get rid of stress - Hah! this is what we think of that!" Or maybe it is my body saying "Oh my god, look how much we need this! You must do this, look this is how stressed out your body is." Either way it itches like hell.

The last two mornings although the majority of my body is better, my hands have itched to high heaven and my knuckles are swollen (not as badly as earlier in the week, but still). It is almost as if I want to rip my fingers off to get them to stop itching or maybe just rip the skin off my fingers. arrgh (yes they itch right now).