Another Baby Milestone in the Books...

First trip to Emergency Room - June 5, 2010
Symptoms - Covered head to toe in red rash including right eye swollen shut
Diagnosis - Erythema Multiforme (basically a rash - not like a teeny tiny rash, but like a OHMYGOODNESS take the kid immediately back to be seen by the doctor so as not to freak out all the people in the waiting room kinda rash - presumed to be triggered by Amoxicillin (although could have also been cinnamon))

Here's how it went down...

Saturday morning  - I was busily prepping for a houseful of lunch guests and making oatmeal for breakfast.  I scooped out T's portion and gave it a whirl in the magic bullet with his pear cube.  Once, it was done, I sprinkled in a bit of cinnamon.  Not sure why - I was putting it in our portion and knew that spices were okay to start introducing at this time - so I gave him a sprinkle.  Not sure if it was the problem or not, but nonetheless, it was a dumb move.  Never introduce something new the morning of a social gathering at your house - it is just dumb.  T is a messy eater and we had him in his high chair in his diaper and bib.  As I was feeding him, I start seeing these little bumps popping up.  At first, I thought that they were mosquito bites since he had been outside watering the grass with B, but they were literally popping up before my eyes.  I stopped feeding him his oatmeal (because by then Brandon had googled cinnamon allergy and it talked about a rash so that is what we thought was the culprit).  Of course, before I got him out of his high chair, I gave him his dose of amoxicillin.  This was his sixth day in his second round of amoxicillin.  He had finished a 10-day course just a few weeks earlier for an ear infection.  I called the nurse at our on-call pedi office and she told me how much benadryl to give him so we tried that.  It was getting worse so off I went (Aunt Momo came along so that B could stay at home to finish all of the party prep - btw, he did fabulously!!!  Seriously, he is the best!)  to the on-call pedi office in Mansfield.  At this point, I'm totally still assuming that he has had a reaction to the cinnamon.  The dr. takes one look and asks if he has recently been on amoxicillin.  I go into detail about that, and she tells us that it is likely a reaction to the antibiotic.  How weird that he would have already taken 15 days worth of it before it caused the reaction.  Weird weird weird.  Saturday, we kept him doped up on benadryl.  He was sad.  We were sad.  Unfortunately, we hadn't seen anything yet...

Sunday morning - he was worse, much worse.  We gave him benadryl first thing to see if it would help.  When he got up from his first nap, his right eye was almost completely shut and his whole face, hands, and feet were ridiculously swollen.  Brandon and I chatted and uniformly agreed to haul ourselves to the ER.  Prepping for this is no small feat since I wasn't sure if we were going to be gone for 2 hours or 8 hours.  After I pumped, packed 3 bags, his lunch, some snacks, my moby wrap, the stroller, the pump and extra bottles, etc., we were ready to go.  We pulled up and I pulled T out of the carseat and just took him and myself in to get signed in.  I thought something about having an exposed rashy sad boy might speed up the process.  Brandon walked in with the stroller et. al and we were immediately called back.  Brandon may or may not have said that we will draw spots on him everytime we need to go to the ER from now on.  Ha.  I wasn't sure what the treatment might be - it looked like steroid shots are sometimes prescribed.  The topical rash part didn't worry me as much as the swollen face, eye, hands, feet, etc.  The main concern with something like this is always if it affects their breathing so it was worth a trip just to make sure he was okay.  It's worth the price of the visit just for the peace of mind.  The ER doctor just said to keep him comfy with benadryl and motrin and to come back if it continued to get worse.  The fever that accompanied it made him more uncomfortable than the rash itself I think.  It didn't get any worse on Monday, and we started seeing huge leaps of improvement on Tuesday.  Thankfully, he seems to be back 100% now!

If you have been following the blog, you can only imagine that I have tons of pictures to document this, but my dad asked that I not post them.  For one thing, they will make you really really sad.  For the second thing, they will make you really really itchy.  I am a sympathetic itcher.  I scratch when I see things that should make other people itchy.  Always have.  I also itch when I see lots of ants.  Just one of those things.  I scratched a lot.  In fact, I'm itchy just writing this post.  It was that bad.

3 doctor visits in 6 days (1 ear ache, 1 9 mo. check up, 1 rash consult) : $650
1 ER trip : (haven't got the bill yet, but I'm guessing $1,000)
Motrin, Benadryl, and gas $ for Aunt Momo : $40
Having my happy little unsplotchy meatball back : Priceless

Xoxo,
Gara