Do You Prefer Sunburn or Rash?

The state of my skin the past 48 hours has gone from “don’t want to whine and make excuses” to “wow this really hurts, I can’t believe I let myself get this burned” to “twitterable, but I’ll try not to sound too complainy” to “full on bloggable.”

I’ve been taking antibiotics the past 9 days. Was supposed to go another day, but I finally called a doc at home who sent me see the doctor that Brent McMahon is staying with. He took one look and said, “that is definitely an allergic reaction, stop taking the antibiotics”. See, the strange part is that I was “burned” under my jersey after yesterday’s 4 hour ride, and it kept getting worse through the ride, and even when during the ride to the beach this morning. I layered on the HIC 2x Suncblock (I’ve raved about that stuff before, you can put on one coat and it’ll protect you until you get it off with soap). I ran with a shirt on. I was done early in the day. I mean – I’ve been here nearly 6 weeks without any sun burn, you’d think that I would have it down, eh? But I just kept getting redder, feeling sick, nausea, headache, swollen joints, and I was red under all my clothes and even my eyes looked bright red.

The verdict is I’m allergic to sulfur medications, and if I had continued I could have developed a much worse condition, which would have required TUE (theraputic use exemptions) drug forms and time off from training. Right now the doc said I should stay out of the sun as much as I can, wear lots of good sunblock, stop taking the drugs and use Claritin to get over it. Luckily, the infected cut I started taking the drugs for has healed, so I should be fine without another round of antibiotics.

So good! And now I can get back to training, feeling strong, and hitting the Kefer to get my GI tract back on schedule! As for the title question between rash and burn? Hard choice, at least the rash isn’t from stupidity of neglecting sunblock, but it sure hurts. (And swimming on a reef and getting an infected food three weeks ago was not without stupidity.)