My Poor Little Bug!

So, a couple of weeks ago, Bug came down with a case of poison ivy, right before her Father-Daughter dance. We decided that the best course of action would be to go to our Doctors office and get her a Cortisone shot, just like she had right before her fall school pictures. (Yes, it seems like any time something "fancy" is going to happen she gets some sort of skin condition!)Well, it seemed a little better the next day, and we could easily cover it up with some make-up and off to the dance she went! By that Monday, her rash was worse, so we took her back to the Doctors. Well, he decided that she had some sort of mild skin infection, and gave her some antibiotics, telling me that if it hadn't gotten any better by Wednesday, that she would need to go to a Pediatrician. (They're a General Practitioner.) All seemed well, and she took her last dose of the antibiotics Monday morning. Yesterday morning she gets up, goes to school, everything is normal. I get a call from the Boys & Girls Club saying that she's itching like crazy. I just so happened to have a conference with Bugs teacher yesterday afternoon and I told her that I would drop some cream off before I went to her teachers room and I would be back soon after that to pick them both up and take them home. Not a terrible thing, and I knew she could wait just a little bit with the cream. Well, we get home and Bug has a HORRIBLE rash all over her body. I call the Doctors office to see if they had any appointments and they told me to bring her as a walk-in at 6. No big deal.

Now this is the part of the story where it starts to get a little bit hairy. We walk into the Doctors office just after 6pm yesterday afternoon and they take all of her vitals. Blood pressure is just *slightly* up, but she was in a bit of pain, so not terrible. Her temp was right under 99 degrees, so still normal. Everything is looking normal so far, except for the horrible looking rash covering a little over half of her body. The Doctor comes in and looks at her, and determines that it is, in fact, a skin infection because her skin was warm to the touch, and that because the antibiotics cleared it up the first time, that she would refill the prescription and hopefully we could get her into the Dermatologist before the antibiotic was done. (I knew that this would probably NOT happen!) Of course, I ask her 4 or 5 times if it could be an allergic reaction to the medications, and she assures me it's not, but it could be to the Poison Ivy. Well, we fill her prescription, get her some oatmeal bath, and a bar of Aveeno soap with oatmeal in it and go home for a nice warm bath and bed.

This morning Bug wakes up and her skin looks like someone dumped really hot water all over her and she's saying that it doesn't itch, it hurts! Of course, this was right after I give her the morning dose of antibiotics. I'm not a Doctor, they're supposed to know what's wrong with her, so I give her the prescription that she was given. I decide that not only am I going to keep her home from school, that I'm also going to take her to the Emergency Room. If it is in fact a skin infection, and it looks WORSE than it did 10 hours ago, there is something seriously wrong, and I don't want to take a chance! I get Sam up and dressed and Monkey off to school (Who wants to go along so he can play his DSi!), we head in to the ER. They take her right from the door to triage, to a bed. We skipped the admission paperwork and everything. Bug was happy because the triage nurse showed her how to work the bed, and she got to watch cartoons!

We finally get to see a Doctor and she says that she wants to get a CBC on her and check to make sure she doesn't have an infection going on and SHE thinks it's an allergic reaction to something. She gets he blood drawn, after some convincing, and they send that off to be tested. Of course, she didn't want to eat any breakfast this morning because she didn't want to move off the couch, so they bring her some Sierra Mist and her new rounds of medication (Steroids and Benadryl). The CBC comes back clean. She does not, in fact, have any sort of infection, and it shows that she is having some sort of allergic reaction. The ER Doc takes her off of the antibiotic that she was on and asks us if anything new had come into the home. The only things were the antibiotic and new fabric softner. She advised us to switch back to our old fabric softner and discontinue the antibiotic. *sigh*

So, the whole time I was giving her the 2nd course of antibiotic, I was pumping her body full of something that it was trying to fight off. I'm a bit upset by this. I'm not sure if I should request TriCare to change her Doctor, or, give them another chance. This was her life we are talking about!! Who knows how bad this could have gotten if I would have just kept giving her those antibiotics! Who's to say that her poor little body wouldn't have just stopped trying to fight it off and gave in?! What would have happened then?! What would have happened if she would have had a seizure last night in her sleep or gone into anaphylactic shock?! UGH! I'm so upset!!

The worst is over for now, I think. I will just have to add the new antibiotic to the list of medications that she can no longer have. Last year she had a bad reaction to Amoxicillin and she's had that since she was a teeny baby!! Lord... this cuts down on the antibiotics that she CAN have by a lot!! She does look a lot better than she did this morning. The redness and swelling has decreased considerably, and she almost looks back to normal.

I didn't get ANYTHING done today on the house. It's not Bugs fault. I'm just going to work harder tomorrow. I know everything will be okay. It's my mom. It's not like she's coming to do a white glove inspection of my house. It's not like the house is a disaster area, I would just like it to be spotless for my parents visit!! Is that so much to ask?! LOL