I've waited for this day for a long time. Because today may very well be the first day to recovery. But I can't be sure of that for awhile.

Arrived at the House Ear Institute this morning at 8am for the testing. Two other patients are here for the same tests too, one of them is on his second day, while the younger guy is starting his first day like me.

We were all ushered into the testing facility where they had each of us blow into a funneled tube to test our lung capacity. The object is to blow out the candles on this birthday cake on the screen. I only managed to get all except 1. I guess I'm not very good at blowing anything.

I was to go last in this group of three. Two staff members sat with vials upon vials of stuff and needles galore in the corner. One of them was in charge of injection and recording data while the other was in charge of preparing the needles and the allergens.

So I sat there on the chair and put my arm on my hip like I had an attitude (which wasn't hard to do), while they began lining up the first 15 injections into my arms. Inhalants were first up this morning while food allergens were later this afternoon. They had stuff ranging from house dust, dog, cat, cockroach, mold spores (which hurt like a mother), pigweed, various pollens totaling perhaps 40+ different elements. Each element also had 10 different degrees of potency to see where on the allergic meter you are to them. If one is too strong, they give you another shot at a lower dosage and vice versa, to see where your tolerance level to it is at.

Each allergen injection produces a "bubble" at 5mm across. After 10-15 minutes of waiting, they inspect the injection point to see if it has grown, if so, by how much and if you have any odd symptoms arising because of them. Some of the allergens caused my bubbles to swell up to 27mm! Talk about having allergies! After about 5 rounds of this and about 70 shots later, we got a break and rested for about 20 minutes before heading into the food allergens. Food allergens really hurt. And I found out I'm really allergic to corn although I've been eating it for a long time. I guess no more. No biggie, one less food off my list I suppose.

Needless to say, injecting oneself with allergens also produces alot of the symptoms associated with whatever illness we have and so it was a really roller coastery day with my vertigo, headaches, and other allergy related symptoms. This one other guy wasn't faring so well either and he got some bad reactions to the shots. But we got slathered with some cortisone afterwards to soothe away the itchiness.

Anyway, the photo above is of my upper arm where they did most of the injections, but they did work their way down to near the elbow too. It actually looks scarier than it really is but then again, I think having had acupuncture before helped endure all those horrid shots. I don't know how the rest of you feel about needles, but I'm not too scared of them anymore.

I'm going back again for my second day of testing on Friday and will have to endure another 70+ shots again...on my other arm this time since we're running out of space on the one above. After the testing, I'll have lunch and then return back for the counseling and going over the results with my specialist. Over lunch, they will work to put together a *serum* of sorts based on the results of my test for me to help build up my system to these allergens that I'm allergic to.

If this turns out to be the root cause of my vertigo, then it's well worth the wait. I'll just have to deal with the weekly shots for the next 3-5 years for a positive treatment.

It seems like the beginning of an already really long road.

...

Thanks to everyone for your emails, I'll write back to you all shortly. I'm a bit behind, as usual.

Happy Birthday Dave Kim

I'm out.

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