KerryAndGabe.com

This week has been a difficult one. Gabe has been working long hours, and Maddie has been battling an allergy and illness. Monday morning, we woke up to Maddie covered in hives. At first, I just saw a few spots on her arm and thought, “hrm, that’s strange.” My first thoughts were that maybe she was having a reaction to the immunizations that she had received on Friday. Then I lifted her shirt and saw a wider rash which covered much of her torso. I then noticed that they were more like welts than just a rash.

It was difficult to get photos that showed how awful they really looked in person. This was taken first thing in the morning. By the time we got her to Urgent Care, they had gotten worse.

You can see how raised that they were in places in the following photo.

We took her to Urgent Care, since we couldn’t get an appointment with the pediatrician until later in the afternoon. We kinda felt like immediate care was important here! I racked my brain on all the things that she had eaten this weekend, thinking we could be dealing with a food allergy. She had had strawberries for dinner the previous night as well as her first bits of chocolate a few times over the weekend. We believe that she has been well exposed to strawberries previously, so that didn’t seem likely. Chocolate isn’t one of the big allergens. After talking to my mom, she pointed out that it could be a reaction to the antibiotic she had been taking during the past week. I wasn’t sure as I thought she had had the same antibiotic previously. It turns out that it doesn’t really matter if they have had it in the past. You can apparently have a reaction next time, even if you were fine the first time. The antibiotic she had this time was augmentin (which I thought she had taken in the past, but I was wrong). Augmentin contains amoxicillin, one of the penicillin drugs.

Mom was right - the doctor diagnosed her with having a penicillin allergy that should be noted on her charts in the future. They gave her some prednisolone and a prescription for the same as well as a recommendation for a daily dose of Zyrtec. She was able to return to daycare that day (though they seemed rightfully concerned about her when we brought her into school!!).

By the end of the day, the hives seemed to be fading. They looked better in most places, though new ones had popped up in other places. We thought that they would continue to improve. The next morning, we were somewhat surprised and alarmed to find that they looked worse than they had on the first day. Now she had more on her face and arms with quite a bit still on her torso. Having the hives on her face made her look especially awful!

Despite the face you see here (”Mom, stop taking photos of me! I’m not your personal freak show!”), she seemed to be in a pretty good mood. She looked bad, but she didn’t seem to feel particularly bad.

She was still in a pretty good mood most of the evening.

The hives continued to get worse and pop up in different spots. At some point in the evening, she developed a mild fever. Since the hives seemed to be getting worse (at very least, they weren’t getting much better) and she had a slight fever, we put in a call to the afterhours advice nurse. She advised us to see the doctor in the morning but did not seem overly concerned. She felt that her ear infection could have possibly returned.

The next morning (Wednesday), we went to the walk-in clinic where we discovered that her ear infection had returned. The doctor gave her a prescription for a non-penicillin antibiotic (cefdinar). She had taken this one in February when they warned of reddish, clay diaper output. Lovely - looking forward to encountering that again! The pediatrician did not seem to think that the prednisolone and Zyrtec were necessary, unless we felt that they were helping. We could give her Zyrtec or benedryl if she seemed uncomfortable. The prednisolone was messing with her sleep, so we gladly abandoned that treatment! We did need to continue with the Zyrtec as she seemed to be itchy in the coming days.

That evening, we discovered just after the pediatrician’s office closed that Maddie had a fever of 103, and she was shivering. From our previous battles with high fevers, we knew that shivering is a sign that the fever is rising. We were concerned and not sure whether to rush her to the Urgent Care or whether we could wait. We decided to call the after hours nurse line, again, who instructed us to give her Motrin (which we had already done) and to give her a lukewarm bath. If we didn’t get her fever down by one degree in an hour, we should call her back. If the fever got above 105, we should head into the ER.

Fortunately, the bath did the trick and we were able to reduce her fever below 102. During the night, it spiked again around 3am to 104.1. Yikes! She was due for her Motrin. We drifted in and out of sleep together and she felt cooler after a little while.

By the morning, she was fever free and her hives looked much better. She still has them today, which is the 5th day, but they aren’t nearly as noticeable. I’m sure that most people wouldn’t even know that they were there if they weren’t aware of them. She was out of daycare on Wednesday and Thursday due to the fever but was able to return today…just in time for the Mother’s Day Tea, yay!

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Posted by kerry on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 10:02am.
Categories: life.