Hives

On Tuesday night Alicia broke out with hives. True to her emotional nature she started preparing herself for imminent death. We gave her Benadryl, calmed her down, and distracted her with American Idol.
But she remembered to be stressed the next day because I heard her end a phone conversation like this: "So, I guess I'll see you tonight if I'm not dead by then."
Later she asked me if she could please go to the doctor. I was surprised because she has sworn off doctors. Knowing that the doctor wouldn't give any life-saving advice, but realizing that it would put an end to her fears of death, I carted her to town for some authoritative assurance.
The doctor entered the examining room with unnecessary hyper enthusiasm. "Hi. Hi! I'm doctor so and so. I'm so excited to meet all of you! Now, let's see this rash."
Then, without any hesitation he said, "It's hives. If she's had a cold within the last week then it's probably linked to that."
I asked him if the outbreak could also have any correlation to that day's eating habits of no breakfast or lunch and then two pieces of cake.
He laughed and said, "No. But I'm sure you want me to tell her otherwise so here goes: Cake and sugar are horrible and will cause rashes every time. Never eat them again."
I showed him the generic brand of antihistamine we were using and he said, "That's stuff's good, but it will make you..." he suddenly stopped talking, dropped his head and snarfed up a loud fake snore "...if you know what I mean."
I said, "Thank you for acting that out."
Since the diagnosis was so swift, he must have felt like there was time to kill so he started explaining all the fun things you can do with hived-out skin, like scratching words into it and then watching it appear later. He got all excited and said, "Come with me, I'll show you a picture."
He left the room and we packed up our things to follow, but he was gone when we got out. The nurse was trying to point us to the exit when the doctor came bustling around the corner with a huge book. He clunked it down and opened to a picture where someone had scratched the word "hives" into their skin. He was like, "Will you look at that!"
After we obediently 'looked at that', we turned to leave. We were almost to the exit when he called after us,

"You would probably want to scratch CAKE!"

So much for an illusion of authority.