Allergic to penicilin and/or mussels

[Vorago]

I've been on anti-biotics for the last 9 days.

Sunday I had dinner with the 'in-laws' and decided to try fish soup which had a whole lot of mussels, clamps and other seefruit in it.

Monday I wake up with my face swollen up, my arms covered in red spots, my ears and feet ichy. The docter gave me an anti-allergic shot which stabilized the reaction but it's not gone.

Either I'm allergic to the anti-biotics or the seefruit, or both...and it sucks

Problem is, if I stop the anti-biotics my throat infection might come back

One...more...day.

[Solid Moose]

I'm allergic to penicillin, no idea if I'm deadly allergic or not, so hopefully I don't come down with an infection in a strange country.

And seafood is yuck, so no biggie.

[Relic]

Both shellfish and penicillin are common allergies though. It's probably the shellfish, no? You've been on antibiotics for 9 days prior and only now do you have a reaction after eating the soup.

[Vorago]

Yeah, that's what I thought as well.

Plus, I had never eaten seafood before but I've been on antibiotics several times before.

What I'd like to know is how long it takes before this reaction goes away, if it's the seafood.

[JacoLesFlea]

my brother cant eat any kind of shellfish...he is very allergic.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

Sounds like an allergy to seafood.

Allergic response to penicillin is much quicker than 9 days!

[Bruce Lindfield]

A Belgian who can't eat seafood - having visited places like Blankenburge (sp.?) - I think you would starve!!

[Vorago]

That's what I thought as well.

Anyone know how long this gonna stay in my system?

[Relic]

it's usually about 2-3 days if I'm not mistaken w/ the first day being the worst, obviously.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

Originally Posted by Vorago

That's what I thought as well.

Anyone know how long this gonna stay in my system?

Up to a few days if you've had treatment. The problem is caused by antibodies (IgE) which bind to the mast cells, which are part of your immune system. In an allergic reaction they basically don't turn off (after responding to a specific antigen, in this case something associated with seafood) and you get this OTT realease of histamine and heparin from the mast cells.

Histamine causes the "allergic response" symptoms, so if you have taken some anti-histamines, you should be fine and clear up pretty soon

[Bard2dbone]

Originally Posted by Solid Moose

I'm allergic to penicillin, no idea if I'm deadly allergic or not, so hopefully I don't come down with an infection in a strange country.

And seafood is yuck, so no biggie.

Any allergy should be assumed to be life threatening and treated as such.

Allergic reactions get stronger each time. Say you get a bee sting. It's the first one in your whole life, so it just kind of hurts and that's it. But your body may have looked at the proteins in the bee venom and kind of said "Whoa, we can't be doing THAT!" so the the SECOND time you ever get stung by a bee, your throat swells shut and you die.

Or maybe the third sting.

Or maybe the fourth.

Or maybe you don't get reactive to them at all.

But avoid the bees anyway.

The point of my statements is that allergens are sensitizers. Once your body starts reacting to them, each time you are exposed, you will be more sensitive than the last time. So you will react more strongly than the last time. Sometimes those reactions are strong enough that they can kill you.

Google 'anaphylaxis' and check it out. Creepy.

[Papazita]

Originally Posted by Bard2dbone

Any allergy should be assumed to be life threatening and treated as such.

Avelox!
*shudder*

2 years ago, doc prescribed it for my bronchitis. That stuff nearly killed me.

[Mike151]

I have mild alergic recations when I eat mussels but don't have any issue with any other shell fish. It's weird.
One rule of thumb with health is "what happened last"?
The best thing you can do to get it to go down would be benadryl.
Makes you tired as crap but it will help.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

It's probably just a protein or oil that is specific to mussels or the related family of species.

[Muusers]

How about you go to your doctor and ask for a bloodtest.

[Tsal]

It's probably the seafood, penicillin allergy would have showed up earlier me thinks. It can be a very specific thing, for example only mussels.

I'm going to suggest that you have it tested at the hospital, to be sure. If it's not the same doctor, be sure to tell him that you had a severe allergic reaction to something, most likely to seafood, and before that write up everything that was in the soup and that you've been eating or treated with over the past couple of days. If it's the traditional "a drop and a needle" method, they can test about 20 different things at once, depending what substances they have in the storage, of course.

[MichaelThomas]

I play with a guitarist whos allergic to parrot feathers...it's so weird

[sonic assassin]

im allergic to penicillin.. no VD for me..

[Sartori]

If you were allergic to penicillin, you'd probably have noticed before 9 days went by. I'm allergic to penicillin and its related anti-biotics... found out the hard way, too. Broke out in hives the first day of taking them .

[coreyfyfe]

Hope its the shellfish, and it likely is. If you've taken penicillin before and developed an allergy, it would have been a much quicker reaction to the drug. As said above, allergies are sensitization reactions, so they get stronger with each exposure. However, as development of an allergic response is adaptive immunity and takes a lot of maturation to reach IgE expression, it takes days from the first exposure to mount an allergic response, and that response would likely be weak.

Given that you had such a violent reaction so suddenly after eating them, I would say it was the shellfish, but I wouldn't rule out penicillin completely. +1 to getting a blood test at some point, its good to know what you're allergic to.