Ho, Ho, Hives

Alex is allergic to peanuts. Please don’t offer him any food unless you know for sure there are no traces of peanuts in it.

I really thought he’d (and we’d) lucked out and didn’t have any food allergies since he’s had only one reaction to anything. (He broke out in a rash after we ate at Cheeburger Cheeburger about 8 months ago. The only thing he’d had there were fries and apple juice. The fries were cooked in peanut oil, so maybe that’s what caused the rash, but he also ate at another burger place in May that uses peanut oil. I don’t think he broke out then, but that was the day before his pneumonia scare and he already had a rash from hand-foot-mouth disease, so who knows for sure?)

Yesterday around 4:00 Dave and I made PB&J sandwiches and Alex asked for a bite of mine. Just before I gave it to him Dave asked me if I really wanted to give him his first taste of peanut butter on a holiday when the doctor’s office was closed. But I never in a million years would’ve thought he’d be allergic since neither of us is allergic to any food or medicine. Just a couple of minutes later Alex said, “Tongue hurts. Need ice. Tongue hurts! Need ice!” My heart sank because I knew that he was probably having an allergic reaction, though we were hoping he’d just bitten his tongue. We looked in his mouth and it looked like his tongue was a little swollen. Then we noticed his top lip was starting to swell, so I called the doctor, who suggested Benadryl and to keep an eye on him and his breathing for the next 4-6 hours. I ran out to Walgreens (yea, for Walgreens being open on Christmas Day!) to pick up the Children's Benadryl and then we gave it to him along with his breathing treatment. We took pictures of his swollen lips and red, itchy eye so as we monitored him we could determine whether the swelling was getting worse or better. This is what his lips looked like:

Here's a picture after his lips were better but the hives had started. He had a big bump near his right eye:

After the Benadryl, the swelling started to go down so we gave him some dinner, and while he was eating he began coughing and he vomited. We took him upstairs to get him ready for bed and he’d begun breaking out and within 10 minutes he was covered, head to toe, with bumps and red splotches and he was itching like crazy. He was also coughing a lot, had a runny nose, and (we noticed later) was leaking fluid from his ears. I called the doctor back and was told we should take him to the ER for some stronger meds. My parents raced over (thank you!) to stay with Claire. As Dave was loading him into the car to go, he vomited again all over himself, the toys he was holding, Dave, and the garage floor. We finally made it to the ER vomit-free and they fixed him right up with more Benadryl, steroids, and a breathing treatment. Once they watched him for a while, he was discharged, and after a much needed snack and fluids, Alex was in bed at 10:30 last night.

Oh, but there’s no rest for the weary! Around midnight we noticed our cat Bradley was having difficulty breathing and he sort of collapsed on the floor on the way to the litter box. We knew he was fighting a cold, but this seemed like something more serious. So off I went to the emergency vet with him. Diagnosis? Stupidity. He was becoming weak from low oxygen because his nose is too stuffy to breathe through but he won’t mouth breath. We’re trying a couple of things to open up his nose more and tempt him into eating.

Today Dave took Alex to the pediatrician’s office to follow up and we now have one epi pen for school and one for home. (His daycare is peanut-free and doesn’t allow any outside food for the most part, so it shouldn’t be an issue there.) Let’s hope we can avoid peanuts well enough to avoid ever having to use the epi pen.