I just wrote a long email to a friend about this, so I thought I'd post it here on my blog since it's been forever since I wrote a thing.
The past 24 hours have pretty much sucked. The youngest's cough has been getting steadily worse over the past 3 days, so we were waffling on whether to take him to urgent care yesterday or just wait till the doctor's office was open today. We opted for the 2nd choice. Saturday and Sunday nights he was up most of the night. Additionally, yesterday afternoon when I got ready to put the daughter down for her nap, I took her pants off and it looked like she had ant bites on her legs. A bit later I noticed some on her back, too. So we changed her sheets and put her in a different shirt, and put her down for the nap. By the time she woke up, she was covered with blotchy red spots. I thought they must be hives, but I've never really seen them so I wasn't totally sure. By 7 p.m. she was starting to swell in places and we were kind of freaking out, so I took her to the ER at Children's. They gave her Benadryl and said they were hives, and that she either had a virus or that there was a small possibility she was reacting to the amoxicillin she'd been taking the last week for an ear infection. The doctor said there wasn't much else he could do and that they'd probably start looking worse, like big purple bruises. He said to just watch to be sure they didn't show up on her eyeball or in her mouth--and that if they did, to bring her back in.
Well, in the middle of the night she was crying and hubby went to try and comfort her, and her face was totally swollen and her eyes were nearly swollen shut! Still none in her mouth or anything, but it was really bad--she looked like a different baby. Then about 3:30 she puked, and then seemed to calm down some, but the hives just kept getting worse. This morning we made appointments for both her and the youngest to see the pedi. The earliest they could get them in was 11:30. Around 10 we noticed that her hands and feet were turning blue and we freaked again. Called the emergency nurse at our pediatrician's office and she said to bring them in right away. When we got there, everyone was commenting on how severe the hives were, but no one seemed overly concerned about the color of her hands, so we calmed down some. Turns out that's a pretty common reaction to hives as well--the circulation in her body is going towards the hives and away from her hands/feet. Our pedi gave her a steroid and some Benadryl and then gave us a prescription for the steroid. It's supposed to help keep the swelling down, and the Benadryl will keep it from itching, but neither of them will make it go away. It does look better now, but still she looks terrible. I had to reschedule our photo appointment (for our one year photos) which was supposed to be tomorrow, heheh.
The youngest has bronchitis, so she gave him a cough medicine, an antibiotic, and he has to use a nebulizer treatment for the next couple of days. They are both still asleep right now, so that's good. I'm hoping that tonight they will actually sleep. Last night I got maybe a total of 4 hours and it wasn't contiguous so I was pretty tired. Just finished taking a nap myself, woo!
