Update #2...

I also wanted to let everyone know about my health-related issues from the last time I was online. The Zyrtec worked! I don't know exactly what caused the rash but there is a suspect. I do not know how many people are familiar with the source of thier cashews. They are harvested off the bottom of a soft, sweet, red/yellow fruit (called a cashew apple). The cashew is apparently in the same family as poison ivy and the nuts need to be roasted to neutralize the caustic chemical jelly (the jelly can give you chemical burns) that surrounds the nut...even the roasting process is dangerous and the smoke can cause blindness! I mention this because you can find many cashew trees in northern Benin and four days before developing my rash I sampled a raw cashew ( I mistakenly thought the FRUIT was an allergen, not the NUT)....big mistake. I was reminded of Ralf from the Simpsons and his wonderful quote: "It tastes like burning". I had burned my lips and tounge...but it was not too bad. I think i may have been cleaning my knife used in open the cashew nut a few days later, when the rash broke out. I might have touched a some leftover residue and then touched my side...the rest is history. Cashews are apparently one of the most labor intensive nuts to harvest.