The great thing about having health insurance is that if you need -- or even just kind of want -- prescription medications, you can get them at little to no cost. I'm a great believer in better living through chemistry (Tom Cruise can suck it, thank you very much). I take one pill to get on an airplane, another to fall asleep, and a couple that let me live my day-to-day life the way I like to live it. And for the most part I'm very happy with my inexpensive, insurance-subsidized pharmaceuticals. Although I've had a couple of incidents lately with a new medication, including a bout of reflux that netted me yet another prescription -- the pill I take to be able to take my pills. God bless America.

It's winter and it's Alaska and the air is dry, so when I noticed a few red bumps on my skin last Sunday evening, I didn't think much of it. When they were still around on Monday morning, I wondered what they were, but I assumed they'd go away on their own.

When itching, throbbing hives had spread down my arms by Monday night, I started to freak out a little bit.

Then I made the textbook amateur freakout error: I checked WebMD. Which, of course, told me I was going to die more or less immediately.

I woke up Tuesday morning covered from head to knee in hives. Heinous, ugly, itchy hives; hives in a glowing scarlet that contrasts beautifully with my pallid Alaskan winter skin; hives that radiate heat you could feel if you held your hand an inch above my skin; hives I could feel itching on my scalp UNDERNEATH MY HAIR. Hives that made my boyfriend draw back in horror, making a face I've only seen him make when cleaning out the fridge.

I called my doctor's office. They felt it would probably be wise for me to come in right away (given my impending demise).

I called ahead on my way into work and left Tony a message -- I was going to have to leave our copy meeting a little early. He walked into the office a few minutes after I did.

"Not feeling well?" he asked. I pulled at my sweatshirt to show him my neck.

"Jesus Christ!" he shouted.

Tamara, the nurse at my doctor's office, had a similar reaction to my neck. Then I took off the hoodie so she could see the cosmos of carnelian bumps exploding from my tank top.

"Oh, my goodness," she said. She went to get the doctor while I read the December 2008 issue of Redbook and listened to an infant scream in the next exam room.

I felt something itchy above my sock and pulled up my pantleg. The hives were coming down my calves.

The doctor showed up a few minutes later, wearing her customary friendly smile. Until she looked at me.

"Oh my god," she said.

"That's not really something you want to hear your physician say," I said.

(Side Note: The good news is that, apparently, my condition was causing people to call out to the Lord for support. If I had to be in agony, I figured, at least I was helping the people around me get religion.)

She quizzed me about what I'd eaten, whether I'd changed lotions or detergents or experienced an unusual amount of stress. Nothing unusual. In that case, she said, it could be one of the new medications. She cut one dose and cancelled another. Then she prescribed three more. Our course of action: Block every histamine in my body. Shut 'em down. She handed me prescriptions and a fistful of samples.

"Get these in your body," she said.

After I left the doctor's office I stopped by my parents' house. My mother was surprised to see me in the middle of the day.

"I just wanted to see if anyone else is experiencing anything like this," I said, pulling off my sweatshirt. My mother recoiled, poured me a cup of coffee so I could take my first dose of antihistamines, and went to wake up my father THE PARAMEDIC, who has responded to calls on which people have been decapitated and dismembered and had their EYES GOUGED OUT, and who BACKED AWAY FROM ME in horror when I showed off my incredible display of radioactive skin. Then I went back to my office, where Medred walked a large circle around my desk on his way out, leaving plenty of room to keep from catching THE WORST CASE OF HIVES IN RECORDED MEDICAL HISTORY.