Monday, January 31, 2011

Smiling through the Spots


We just can't seem to win for losing. Gracie woke up covered in hives last weekend - an allergy to the amoxycillin she was taking for her ear infection. At first I thought they were bug bites, there were only a few on her neck and belly.
My immediate reaction was to swear that any bug that dared bite my girl would come to an unceremonious crunchy end. But as the day progressed, she got more and more, and they turned in to large welts covering her abdomen, shoulders, legs, arms, toes, ears... you name it. The doctor delcared her ear infection well enough to stop the antibiotics and start a heavy regime of Benedryl, while alerting all of Utah's Pediatric databases that she was allergic to amoxycillin.
Upon hearing that I was allergic to Tylenol(I thought that he should know in case Grace was too) he nearly fell over. He said that in all his 30 years of being a doctor, he had never met anyone that was allergic to Tylenol. "It's like being allergic to shoelaces." Well I guess I feel special.
And yet, as I gave Grace dose after dose of Benedryl, she did not react by being sleepy - rather the opposite: she was wired and agitated for hours and couldn't sleep. Another rare reaction to a very common medicine. So I just stopped ALL medicines (besides Tylenol, which she seems fine with) and pumped her full of fluids to get those hives gone.
Despite looking like a little red Quasimodo, and a little whining, Grace was her normal happy self, smiling and jabbering away.

3 comments:

  1. poor thing. its not very common for babies to get strep but it often shows up as a rash all over the body. if it doesn't go away i'd ask the docotor to swab for strep. and how special for you to be so unique! but we already knew that!! :)

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  2. Shoelaces, huh? We do have some oddly rare things going on with our health in this family, no?

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  3. She is still adorable!! Aunt Shelley wishes she could just give her a squeeze.

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