Right meds, wrong time.

In my past I had taken penicillan for various ailments and have had no problems. So when they stuck me in the ambulance almost 2 weeks ago and asked if I had any allergies, I confidently replied no. Apparently as you get older this can change. I did not know that. Anyway, here I am being transported to a "bigger, better" hospital, receiving my IV of meds and casually riding and talking with the nurse and EMT in the back of the ambulance. I had just had a CT scan and was told I had to be transported for immediate surgery as they didn't have an on-duty surgeon where I was at. I remember the nurse telling me about her daughter asking her not to drive like a maniac or something like that. At that time, I felt my head start to itch and noticed a lump on the back of my head. About 2 minutes later, that lump had doubled in size and I asked the EMT to check it out. She asked if I had bumped my head and I said no. About 2 or 3 minutes after that I noticed that it had doubled in size again and was as large, if not larger, than a golf ball. I tried to express my concern when the nurse noticed that I was breaking out in hives. I looked down at the heart monitor and noticed my heart rate gradually increasing. They asked if I could breathe okay and I said yes. It was about that time that I started dry heaving and the panic was starting to make itself known. I've never had a panic attack in my life but figured that this is exactly what one would feel like. I think due to that, and my neck swelling up, I started having trouble breathing. Maybe it was the power of suggestion, I don't know, but between the dry-heaves and gasping for air, I questioned if I was going to pull through. Luckily for me all this happened while in an ambulance. With a vast array of needles filled with the appropriate medications, about 4 or 5 needles, I was given enough medication to calm me down to where I was able to breathe comfortably again and the dry heaving had subsided. I still had the knot in my head and the hives, but those where bearable. The 2 people I really felt bad for was of course, my wife following in the "Ugly Aztec" who was driving along casually only to see the ambulance lights and sirens go on and then go speeding off, and the nurse. First, the little woman. I remember the driver asking if I wanted lights and sirens on as a joke incase I wanted to feel important. I told him probably shouldn't be cause we didn't want to set my wife off in a panic. She didn't need the extra worry that that would've provided unnecessarily. It would've been cool but not at her expense. So when the sirens did go off, I felt bad for her not knowing what was going on and being unable to do anything about it. Second, there was the nurse. While I think she did her job most efficiently, she did have this look of concern on her face that bordered panic or fear. As she held the bucket under my chin, in case the dry heaving panned out, and jabbed needles in my arm, I couldn't help but to feel sorry for her as my casual ambulance ride turned into so much more. Leave it up to me to make things interesting. All in all, everything turned out okay and after my 6 day hospital stay, with surgery still to come, I'm just glad to be home again. Still to come....the hospital stay