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Old January 23rd 04, 05:55 AM
julie hicks
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pam (Mary) wrote in message ...

I think part of it is genetic. My sister, mother, husband are super white with
dry pink skin. I'm regular white with thicker, oiler skin. I've been like this
all my life even though my diet, activities, body lotion...have changed. I've
heard that taking certain vitamins like B, using certain body lotions and oils
and eating certain herbs like garlic can keep fleas away. I don't do any of
this. We're all different.


I am highly allergic to flea bites, chiggers and mosquitos. I have
cats so I am around fleas a lot here (in Arkansas we have a long
season for them). Even with just 2 or 3 bytes, the area around the
bites will swell up and turn really read and hurt. God forbid I get
several bites on my ankles because they will get really swollen and I
can barely stand to have socks on or be on my feet too long. I was not
like this as a child, I developed the allergy as an adult. My husband
is the exact opposite, he has no reaction to bites. Until we got
married, he wouldn't even use flea control because it just didn't
bother him when his cats got fleas.

I asked both my doctor and my sister (a nurse) about this and each
said that more than likely my husband IS getting bitten but he is just
not allergic, so he doesn't experience normal symptoms. The doctor
said that while most people are allergic to fleas, mosquitos,
chiggers, spiders, bee stings, etc. not everyone is and some are only
allergic to certain combinations. After a few years of witnessing my
husband go bite free and me in misery, I KNOW he's not allergic, there
is no way he can be.

A good example of the range of allergic reactions is when I got bitten
by a brown recluse spider. While most people can have an incredibly
bad reaction to bites by this spider, mine was much less severe than
you hear stories about. I got bitten on the back of my thigh after
sitting on a log in a nearby park. I developed what I thought was a
nasty painful rash, although since it was on my back side, I couldn't
look at it to well. When I went to the doctor after several days of
getting worse, he said it was from brown recluse spider bites, that I
had THREE bites and was very blessed that I'm not one of the unlucky
group of people who are so allergic that they could die from bites
like mine. He put me on oral antibiotics, gave me an antibitic and
cortizone injection and told me to keep it clean. After 2 weeks it was
gone with minimal scarring. But, honestly, it wasn't that bad, so when
I hear people freak out about recluse bites, I just don't relate, just
like my husband doesn't related to my complaining over fleas.

So anyway, I guess I'm glad I'm highly allergic to Fleas and not
spiders. And I really believe that some people are just very lucky and
don't react.