I've listened to others tell their stories about people with perfume and felt so awful for them and all the while so thankful that this didn't seem to be one of my problems. Well, NO MORE!!
My son used a new cologne today that my sister had given him on a recent visit and it was the first time I'd smelled it. I've NEVER had a reaction to perfumes before, but this one did it!! He needed a lift down the hill to the bus and I got into the car with him for only a few brief minutes, but we weren't in the car together more than a minute when my stomach began to turn and ache right away and I began to wonder what in the world was happening! I have been able to use perfumes and have never had a reaction to even those which others have used other than perhaps an aversion or a headache. But I've had that since I was a kid and it didn't change once the masto came around. So I wasn't expecting to react to this perfume. But react I did! By the time my son was out of the car and I'd turned it around to return home, no more than 3 or 4 minutes had passed if that much. But I began to feel so incredibly weak and I began to wonder if I could even get back home but then I thought, What else could I do but to keep going and GET HOME!! So I went home and parked the car, left it totally opened and called for my husbands help as I got in the door. He realized that something was wrong and began getting my antihistamines. Yet, my stomach was so upset and I'd just finished eating my lunch and had taken my son to catch the bus while my husband finished his lunch.
This was the first time I've even had vomiting as part of my symptoms and although that's pretty extreme for me, it was such a relief in a way and then I was able to take my medicine and lie down. But the symptoms were progressing and I had to hold on tight while I was waiting for the dyspnea to stop and for the malaise to pass. But then I fainted, which is my normal. I had looked in the mirror and I looked like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeers Mama, the way my nose was such a bright red, My neck and chest were also flushed, but I'd never seen my nose so red before!! Yes, IT GLOWED!!!
My husband came around to check on me cause he knows that fainting is one of my symptoms and he woke me up and after talking with me for a bit and helping me to keep consciousness I realized that although my symptoms were under control for the time, I really needed to crash out in bed and stop all physical activity.
Yet although I slept, I didn't sleep well cause my racing heart work me up! My pulse in my arms and in my neck were such that they sent vibrations through my body! It was impressive the strength of the reaction that perfume had caused!!! Just impressive, cause when I woke up, my stomach was aching again, so I took an omeprazol and a ranitidine and THEN finally my stomach calmed back down again.
Well, all was fine until my son returned home from college this evening. He barely stepped into the room to say good evening and the waft of the remants of his perfume came my way and suddenly my stomach began to double up again and I could feel that malaise as well! It was almost immediate the return reaction! It absolutely shocked me the speed and strength of this reaction and it's frightening how quickly it began to overtake me.
Well, my poor son, he'd not any idea of what had happened after I'd dropped him off and he was a bit confused, but when he realized that it was the perfume on his clothes he took them off and put them in the wash and that perfume went right into the trash!!! Whew!
Never again do I want that to happen again, but unfortunately, from after hearing others go through what they go through and having experienced it now, I'm hoping that this won't turn into a permanent trigger. But I will from now own be a great deal more careful with perfumes, that's much is certain!!!
Lisa