Several years ago I woke up with a big welt on my back, about the size of a quarter and quite tall. It didn't hurt, but it was a strange shape: hard, white, co

Several years ago I woke up with a big welt on my back, about the size of a quarter and quite tall. It didn't hurt, but it was a strange shape: hard, white, conical, with a red dot in the middle. The next few days I woke up with itchy bumps on my skin. I thought they were mosquito bites. I became obsessive about keeping the windows closed. Through the next few months it got worse. Huge swaths of them would appear across my arms and legs. But when I went to show them to someone, they would be gone! I discovered that they could come and go within a matter of hours. At its worst, it would look like I was mauled by a tiger. The mosquito bites would take winding paths down my legs, following veins and arteries in spidering patterns almost like red claw marks. I went to a doctor, and they sent me to an allergy specialist. They gave me an allergy panel, but only the pure histamine gave the bumpy itchy response. The diagnosis: chronic idiopathic urticaria. No cure. Just hope it stops happening eventually. Give it two years. Well, it took two years to go away, but it's gone now, I think. It shows up again sometimes though, randomly, especially when I'm stressed. The worst part is that it makes it harder to notice when I have other reasons to be itchy, which I've had many: pinworms, lice, jock itch. Fortunately no bed bugs though! That was one of our fears during this whole thing.