Itchy, Scratchy, and No Fun at All!

Wednesday morning at 2 AM Alayna woke up and came into my rooms saying she had a bad dream and was really itchy. I wasn’t fully coherent and I brushed her off and said to go rub lotion on her tummy (she does have dry skin a lot and this usually helps). She came back in crying saying it was burning really bad so I drug myself out of bed and gave it a closer look. 

I took her into the bathroom where the lighting is better and lifted her shirt and she was COVERED in some sort of rash, large welts and hives. It looked awful!!!! She was in tears and “Mom Mode” kicked in. 

I ran to the the medicine cabinet and rummaged through the 100’s of bottles in there and of course we didn’t have a single bottle of Benedryl. The only thing we did have was Zyrtec which she takes everyday for her seasonal allergies. I gave her a dose of that since it was all I had and then stuck her in bed with Jared to help keep her calm while I ran to Walgreens to get some Benedryl. 

By the time I got home she was doing a bit better. I gave her the Benedryl and she slept in the bed with me all night. In the morning she didn’t seem to be improving much. 

I took her to the doctor and her pediatrician said it looked like she was having an allergic reaction to either the Amoxacillin or the Hydrocodone she was taking for her tonsillectomy. She told me to take her off of all of it and let the ENT know. So we stopped all the meds, called the ENT and tried to help her by giving her Benedryl every 4 hours to get it all under control. 

The next morning it still didn’t look like it was improving much. In fact, it seemed like it was spreading and getting worse!

I gave her more Benedryl, more Zyertec, and threw her in the tub with some luke warm water and oatmeal. She said it felt really nice while she was in the bath but about 5 min. after she got out it was terrible again. 

I called the doctor’s office to let them know how Alayna was doing and they told me to bring her back in. We ended up seeing another dr. in the office who after looking at her was of the mindset that she wasn’t having an allergic reaction to the meds, but that it might be from stress, a virus or something else. She had been on the other meds for 9 days and having a reaction this far out from taking it didn’t really seem likely. She said it’s almost impossible to know what though and since she had just had surgery her body has been under a lot of strain so it’s hard to to pin point exactly what the cause is. 

The treatment I was giving her at home wasn’t working at all so she decided she needed a healthy dose of steroids to help her system to get ahead of this reaction. They gave her an oral dose in the office before we left and wrote a prescription for us to fill at the pharmacy just in case we needed it.