By: Christi Munson
All photos were provided by the author
My name is Christi Munson. I was only four years old when my own body first turned against me.
It was winter of 1973. I was playing out in the snow, doing what kids do, when everything went wrong. Suddenly, my skin felt like it was on fire. I started swelling up so fast and so severely that by the time my parents got me inside, what I remember was the ER, my arms and legs were locked completely. I couldn’t bend them. The panic in the room was real. My swelling was so massive that my parents couldn’t even pull my clothes off. They had to take shears and physically cut me out of my snowsuit.
That was the day the flares started, and decades later, they still come and go without warning.
Learning to navigate CU through ages 7 to 56
Around age seven, the aggression of my angioedema (swelling) shifted a bit. The terrifying, locked-joint, full-body episodes subsided, but the hives didn’t disappear — they just became patchy. For the next five decades, I lived in a state of constant compromise with my skin.
I became a master at navigating a world full of hidden landmines. If I went swimming, I’d get a flare. If I got too hot or too cold, I’d get another one. A simple walk outside or sitting directly in the grass could trigger it.
And then there was food. Early on, I was told I was allergic to strawberries and citrus fruits, so I avoided them like they were poison. I went over fifty years without touching them, adapting my entire life to avoid enjoying simple fruits, so I could keep the swelling at bay.
When the truce ended
Then came Valentine’s Day 2025, and the truce was officially over.
Out of nowhere, the patchy episodes vanished, and the full-body angioedema came back with a vengeance. It felt like I was four years old again. The itching felt so incredibly intense that my whole body would literally seize and shake from it.
Desperate for a way out, I went to an allergist later that year. I sat down and was re-tested for every single thing I had been told I was allergic to for the last five decades. I braced myself for the results.
The twist? I wasn’t allergic to any of them.
It turned out my immune system wasn’t fighting the outside world; it was just fighting itself. To prove it, at 56, I did something I never thought I’d do: I ate my second strawberry since childhood. And nothing happened.
Where I stand today
So here I am in 2026, still dealing with this current, massive flare that started over a year ago. My daily routine is a heavy-duty chemical armor just to keep me functioning: two 180mg tablets of Fexofenadine twice a day (a combined 720mg dose); Famotidine 20mg twice a day to block the secondary histamine receptors; and Triamcinolone 1% cream whenever the surface fire gets to be too much.
It’s been a long, exhausting road since 1973. This isn’t a story about a simple allergy — as chronic hives are rarely linked to allergies — it’s about me, my unpredictable immune system, and a lifetime of learning how to fight through the storm.
Resources to help you navigate your own journey
If Christi’s story resonates with you, We CU offers tools to help you advocate for yourself or a loved one. Try our My CU Visit Card to help you communicate symptoms clearly with your provider, or chat with Scratch, our AI-powered chat tool trained on 175 peer-reviewed CU research, to get answers to your questions anytime.
