Brody’s Birthday (Continued)

The day before Brody’s birthday Brent called me at work. He had just picked up the boys from Gretchen’s house, and he called to ask me what Chicken Pox look like. He also asked if I had noticed a rash on Brody when I was getting him ready to go that morning. Nope, I didn’t notice anything. He had been at daycare all day long, and Gretchen noticed a few funny spots on him after he got up from his afternoon nap. That night the spots got increasingly worse. I, of course, called the expert. Mom described what chicken pox looked like, and I just didn’t think that was what Brody had. We just decided we’d take him in to the Dr in the morning and go from there. The spots at that time were just on his legs and stomach.

Here is how Brody looked the next morning, you know… on his birthday…

The spots had spread to his face. In fact, the only place that the spots didn’t appear was on the palms of his hands and the bottom of his feet. Crazy! As you can see by his silly lil smile, the spots weren’t really affecting him.

We wracked our brains to think of anything that had been done differently, or if he had eaten anything new. The only things we could come up with was:

1 – He was on amoxicillin for his ear infections. I had heard horror stories of people reacting to that before.

2 – He had eaten strawberries at Gretchen’s house on Monday.

3 – I put a new outfit on him on Monday, and because I was in a hurry I didn’t wash it before putting it on him.

 

We headed to the dr and told them everything we had thought of. They were shocked to see how bad his spots were. They said this wasn’t typical of anything they had seen before. They put in his chart that he’s allergic to both amoxicillin and strawberries. Better safe than sorry!

Here’s what he looked like that morning:

 

And here’s what he looked like by that night:

They gave us a new medicine for his ears and told us to give him Claritin for his rash. We thought we were good. And then… Wednesday night happened. We went up to Brent’s parent’s for supper that night. As the night went on Brody started to feel warmer and warmer. But that wasn’t it. He also started to get more and more swollen. His little legs were so swollen that his thighs didn’t even have fat rolls. His feet looked like if I touched them they would explode. It was awful. In addition to the swelling, he also started to turn really purple. His skin, his lips, everything. I ended up taking him into the ER. They checked him over and did some blood work. Everything appeared normal (unless you looked at him instead of his chart). They gave him a dose of oral steroids, a prescription for more, and sent us packing.

I was certainly relieved that it was nothing more serious. I was a little nervous in the ER. The Dr kept saying she was very worried about him. She threw out words like platelets, and that’s just not a good word in my vocabulary. God was right there with us, though, and Brody now looks like this:

We’re still fighting some sleepless nights. They tell us that’s because of the steroids, and tomorrow is his last dose of that. YEAH! We’re ready to have our happy little 1-year old back again!