What Do You Think Caused this? Allergic Reaction?

About six months ago, I was slicing jalapenos for a type of stew I'd found a recipe for. I've never cared for jalapenos before but my boyfriend loves them so I usually just deal with them. Anyway, after I sliced them, I immediately rewashed my hands with soap... I know pepper juice is not too nice if it happens to get into your eyes.

I did not touch my eyes, but immediately after the slicing, my eyes began to BURN bad. I took a cold shower and it took about a half an hour before my eyes became normal again.

Everything was fine then until about an hour after we actually ate some of the stew. My hands, especially my finger tips where I had touched the jalapenos started to have a burning feeling as well. The feeling kept escalating and by eight that night, my entire hands, both of them, felt like they were ON FIRE! It litterally felt as if my skin was burning away.

I tried lotion and some creams that I had in the medicine cabinet, nothing eased the pain. The only thing that seemed to help was to emmerse my hands completley in ice water. This would help for all of about ten minutes before the water would feel like a hot tub to my hands and I'd have to have new, colder water. By this time the pain was absolutely unbearable without the cold water. I tried cold rags, frozen food, and even some potholders we'd soaked and cooled in the freezer and nothing helped.

I was up with that burning feeling from 8 PM until about 5:30 in the morning. I tried to sleep, and I would sleep for a few minutes at a time with my hands soaking in a bowl of water next to my bed but soon it would become too warm and I'd wake up. I couldn't go to the hospital because I had no medical insurance and not much money so I had to put up with it.

I never did find out what the cause of this was, but I was wondering if any of you have had something like that happen before? It was one of the most painful experiences of my life!

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