Allergic

The morning Boston took the last dose of antibiotics to treat his strep, I noticed a bit of a rash on the back of his neck. By that afternoon it had spread to his stomach, and the next morning he even had a few spots on his face. Since he had been sick, I hadn’t given him any new food, and couldn’t think of anything new he had come in contact with, so I took him to the doctor. His regular doctor wasn’t in, so I told the sub he hadn’t had been around anything new, and that we had just been in the office the week before for his strep throat. The doctor told me it was just a reaction to something, and that we may never know what. She told me to give him Benadryl for 24 hours, then gave him the first dose and said the rash should start clearing up in 15 to 20 minutes. Instead, it got worse. The spots of the rash got bigger and redder, spread all over his face, and down his arms and legs. So, the next day I called the Doctor again and she gave him a prescription for steroids to help get whatever was bugging him out of his system. I was a bit annoyed with her conclusion that it was a reaction to some random thing (especially after the Benadryl didn’t work). So, I decided to get brave and see what I could find online. After researching a bunch of scary and nasty looking rashes, their symptoms and side effects, I’m about 98% sure Boston had an amoxicillin rash (F.Y.I. a reaction to the antibiotic he was on, that can happen up to five days after the kid stops taking the amoxicillin and can even hit if they have taken it in the past). But, because the doctor didn’t spot it, and because I wanted it gone, I filled his steroids prescription. Unlike the rash that didn’t seem to bother him at all, the steroids made Boston miserable. He wouldn’t sleep, he wanted to nurse all the time, and everything made him mad. It was seriously like he had baby roid-rage! After two days the rash was mostly gone, and I was going crazy, so I stopped giving him the steroids and he was fine. Definitely not an experience I ever want to have again!

This is an example of how little the rash bothered Boston, and also of his recent decision that everything belongs on his head.