Within 10 minutes of being stung i wanted to rip my skin off, itched all over my body even the palms of my hands, not good whilst driving.
A few minutes later i had lost sensation in my lips and as i was near A&E i thought it prudent to call in.
Waiting to see how i react next time.
Of interest I hope:
25 years ago, this happened to me:
It was September, had the lid off one of my hives and doing a check.
A bee stung my hand around the index finger - thumb gap
I was not wearing gloves (stupid)
Another bee also stung me followed by two more stings.
Very quickly I started feeling very unwell, little faint, dry mouth.
Quickly replaced hive bits.
Started for house fifty yards away, almost fainting,
Itching spread through my body with hot sensation
Removed clothes on way to house - itching absolute hell by now
Couldn't breathe other than with a heaving, rasping motion and sound.
Wife phoned doctor.
Looked in mirror:
Face bloated, barely able to see, eyes felt squeezed in their sockets, mouth swollen tight over my teeth, tongue swollen.
Chest was very tight, breathing very difficult now and I had removed all clothing (An Adonis then so lovely to see)
Amid wheezing, rasping, gasps for breath, I listened to my wife telling me that the doctor said I would probably be all right in a while just had a bit of an allergy.
I did recover and continued to keep bees but always used gloves and ensured not being stung again.
That said, I used to get occasional mild stings as bees stung through leather gloves but always felt their stinger didn't manage to go far enough in, due to thick leather) to give me the full venom.
When I moved the following year, I kept the bees 30 yards from the back door, with no problems. I mention this because I had no idea about anaphylactic shock in relation to bee stings.
More importantly nor did my doctor. even more importantly, two doctors I have seen over the past couple of years are none too up on it either. One even dismissed my account of previous incident as unlikely and unlikely to be anaphylactic shock.
Nearly finished!
Wife ran a Girl Guide unit - youngster there was allergic to nuts - the mother who was also a Guider and went to camps with her carried a couple of prescribed epipens.
Amazingly, there was another girl who also had a nut allergy. This has snowballed over the years and everything now carries a warning about nuts. Epipens flourished.
My drift:
You can't trust doctors to be up to speed with things, for one they stop reading the Lancet, or anything else of use, soon after qualifying and therefore are unfamiliar with new problems.
YOU need to know what can go wrong - your doctor is probably not the best source of information for this and can save the cost of an epipen by getting you to give up doing what you enjoy.
They're GPs -
General Practioners but like you to consider them the font of all knowledge. The net has Doctors and loads of good information - chosen carefully.
Hospital is definitely the best place - they see this sort of event from time to time and can give advice but only after you've nearly died!