I'm just really confused. and even considering that this might be the case makes me think i'm crazy.
anyway, i have an extensive list of drug allergies. around 10, all of them antibiotics. enough that i can't remember them all and i used to carry a card in my wallet with them all written down. i guess i never thought this was *that* uncommon, until in 2011 i moved halfway across the country and when i started going to new doctors and trying to recreate the list, all the nurses and doctors were pretty surprised at how many there were. they asked me what reactions i got from them, and i said that i got hives. however, all but one of those reactions happened before i was old enough to remember, so my mother told me hives was the reaction to all of them. i only recall it happening once after i was old enough to remember. i was maybe 5 or 6 and i did indeed get hives. i had a lot of ear infections as a kid, so it's possible that they were all legit and the allergies are all legit.
i had also been told by my parents that i had a "high fever" when i was a baby, and i was in the hospital for a week. they never said what illness caused it; they always referred to it as a "high fever". i didn't really think about that too much until i was in my 20s. i asked what the cause was. my dad said "we don't know. doctors didn't tell you much back then." i thought that was a little weird that they didn't ask, but didn't think much else.
in 2013 my parents were moving out of their house and cleaning everything out. i visited, and made a stack of my old crap that was still in their garage that i wanted shipped to me (mostly college textbooks). my dad said "hey, i found your old medical records! let's see what that high fever cause was..." so we looked, and it wasn't just a "high fever" that i was "in the hospital" for. i had sepsis, and i was in the freaking ICU for a week. somehow the records ended up in my mom's hands, and i asked her to throw them on the pile of things to be shipped to me. she made a move to do it, then froze for a few seconds, and threw them on the pile. her hesitation made me wonder what other secrets lurked in my childhood medical records. at the time i assumed it was probably just neglect-related things.
she never shipped the package. she knows i really wanted those books. it was hundreds of dollars of college textbooks. she said she didn't have time and she just threw it all out. but even then, i had a strong suspicion she never sent the books because she was hoping i'd just forget about it, and shipping the books WITHOUT the medical records would arouse suspicion. she doesn't want me to have them for some reason.
i think i went to more doctor's appointments than usual for a child. maybe i needed them? i don't know.
but here's an odd thing: my mom was a stay-at-home mom until i was old enough to care for my younger siblings. her first job re-entering the workforce was in the medical records department of my pediatric medical group.
she said she had the records because they gave them to her when they closed down a few years ago, but is that normal? when doctor's offices close down, do they actually make an effort to give old paper records to people? i don't know. did she take them when she worked there? i don't know.
on one hand, it was 30ish years ago, so i guess it's moot now. but on the other hand, the consensus among my ENTs and audiologists has been that my early childhood illness (and subsequent ICU care) is likely the cause of my partial deafness. which has made my life a lot harder than it needs to be, especially because my parents refused to pay for hearing aids when i was a child. it's distressing.
so now i'm wondering if bringing me to the doctor claiming ear infection, then bringing me right back claiming allergic reaction to those drugs, repeat 7x, was maybe MBP.
but i'm questioning myself. maybe i was just allergic to a lot of $#%^ (i wasn't breastfed). maybe i did just get a random illness of unknown origin when i was a kid. maybe my mom was afraid to give me my medical records for other reasons. i just don't know anything.
and i guess i never will know, because i'm assuming that my mom probably destroyed the medical records and the place closed down so i can't get a copy.