I was 11 years old when I first experienced hives. My friends started noticing tiny lumps on my skin and jokingly nicknamed them “Coleys” in reference to my last name. It took about six weeks for my parents to realize that they weren’t going away, and that this was something a doctor needed to see.
I was kept in a separate waiting area in case I was contagious. The doctors had no idea at the time what was fueling my hives. I was told I could be allergic to dairy and had to avoid it. After about four months of testing, I finally had a diagnosis: chronic spontaneous urticaria. The condition, as I learned, causes red, itchy hives that last more than six weeks, and the cause isn’t usually known.
I started high school with hives, and once they started, they never stopped. I had some days that were better than others, but they were consistently present for a year and a half. I was quite petite and had these little marks all over my skin. I was bullied as a result. I remember being told at school that the only food I could have for lunch was a baked potato due to the dairy allergy I thought I had. I burst into tears, wondering if this would be my life forever. Things got even worse when my teacher looked at me during a bad hives day and said in front of the whole class, “Oh my goodness, Talia, what’s wrong with your face?”
This bad flare dragged on and on. I was on so many different medications in hopes that something would change. Then one day I woke up, and everything was different. The hives weren’t gone, but there was a dramatic improvement. I ran downstairs, screaming and crying with excitement. They ended up disappearing completely. After 18 months of living with continuous hives, it was all over—or so I thought.
A Decade Later, My Skin Struggles Returned
I’m a content creator, and last July, while my partner and I were on a TikTok Live, someone asked me what happened to my arm. I looked down and saw a red mark—my heart sank. I immediately knew that the hives were coming back. I had always worried that they would.
At first, the hives came up here and there, and I hoped that maybe they wouldn’t be as bad as they were when I was a child. But in October, they came back in full force.
