It was about this time last year when we discovered our son was probably allergic to penicillin. It started with a small hive that developed on his face around lunch time. I didn’t think too much of it when I put him down for his afternoon nap, but only about an hour into it, he woke up crying in a pitch that put my mommy instincts on high alert. When I got him on the changing table and pulled off his pants, his poor little legs were completely covered in hives like I’ve never seen before.
I’ve been prone to hives my whole life, but I never saw anything quite like this. He was so blotchy and swollen, I wasn’t sure what the hell it was. He had just gotten over an earache and had actually been off the antibiotic for a day or two, so an allergic reaction to penicillin was the furthest thing from my mind. The mysterious rash also coincided with the arrival of our new furry pet sugar gliders, so I was leaning more toward some kind of animal allergy.
Then, as my mind was racing, it occurred to me that the sugar gliders are a kind of exotic animal, and the “Scammers-R-Us” dog and pony show we bought them from were totally shady. My mind flashed back to the kind of horror stories you used to hear in college from the students who signed up for Parasitic Biology—some guy comes back from safari in Africa with a rash, and the next thing you know, worms are crawling out of his skin. You know, the kind of stuff you might see on Monsters Inside Me.
So I picked up the phone and called my husband, the former Army combat medic. “I don’t know what’s wrong. He has some crazy rash all over his legs, and he feels like he’s burning up. He’s screaming bloody murder.” My husband told me to hold tight—he was coming home right away. He only works five minutes down the road, but by now the rash had spread all over my son’s body, and he was clearly in pain. Even if we decided to take him to the hospital, it was a good 15 minute drive at least. I was pretty positive if tarantulas weren’t about to come crawling out of my baby’s skin, he was going to go into anaphylactic shock on the car ride there, and then what would we do?
I made an executive decision. I wasn’t screwing around. I dialed 9-1-1. Yup, you read that right. I dialed 9-1-1. I told them I didn’t know if it was an actual emergency, but I thought I might need an ambulance to bring the baby to the hospital, just in case he stopped breathing on the way there. Needless to say, my husband arrived just a minute or two before the paramedics, and by the time they walked through the door, my son had stopped screaming and the rash was, well, still a rash. No tarantulas. No throat swollen shut. Just a really itchy baby.
After the paramedics left, my husband made a new rule that I was not allowed to call an ambulance without getting his approval first. The pediatrician thought it was absolutely hysterical that I’ve been to war but got so shook up over a bad case of hives. “Somebody call 9-1-1! My baby’s got a rash!” he teased. When he finally stopped laughing, he said he thought the whole episode was very telling of how we are wired as parents and how powerful our protective instincts are.
“They’re our world,” he sympathized. “Everything’s different when it’s your child.”
It turns out that every once in a while, the baby still breaks out in hives, although not quite as bad as the first time he scared me to death. A mosquito bit him on the eyebrow this summer, and the little guy’s eye totally swelled shut for a day. Yesterday something—we’re not sure if it was a spider or a mosquito—bit him on the neck, and he started growing a second head. My husband thought maybe we should call the doctor, but I persuaded him to let me try some Benadryl first.
Several hours later, I found my husband holding my son on his lap in the rocking chair, thermometer in hand. We have one of those very cool thermometers that you can hold right up to his forehead and get a read. But now, my husband was holding it up to my son’s neck. This was the second time he tried taking the temperature of the bug bite.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“It’s still 110 degrees,” he said, looking at me with the pouty face that comes over him when he’s concerned about our son.
“The bug bite?”
“Yeah.”
I asked him why he kept trying to take the temperature of the bite, and he said that’s how you can tell if there’s an immune response or an infection.
“You wouldn’t even be able to do that if we didn’t have that kind of thermometer,” I said.
He looked at me with his puppy dog eyes, which just made me love him even more—every time I see our son reduce him to a six year old.
“No, but they would do it if we took him to the emergency room,” he replied. I shot him a look of near consternation. Before walking away, I told him,
“Put the baby down. Put the thermometer away.”
And I guess that’s just how we’re wired.
Then, as my mind was racing, it occurred to me that the sugar gliders are a kind of exotic animal, and the “Scammers-R-Us” dog and pony show we bought them from were totally shady. My mind flashed back to the kind of horror stories you used to hear in college from the students who signed up for Parasitic Biology—some guy comes back from safari in Africa with a rash, and the next thing you know, worms are crawling out of his skin. You know, the kind of stuff you might see on Monsters Inside Me.
So I picked up the phone and called my husband, the former Army combat medic. “I don’t know what’s wrong. He has some crazy rash all over his legs, and he feels like he’s burning up. He’s screaming bloody murder.” My husband told me to hold tight—he was coming home right away. He only works five minutes down the road, but by now the rash had spread all over my son’s body, and he was clearly in pain. Even if we decided to take him to the hospital, it was a good 15 minute drive at least. I was pretty positive if tarantulas weren’t about to come crawling out of my baby’s skin, he was going to go into anaphylactic shock on the car ride there, and then what would we do?
I made an executive decision. I wasn’t screwing around. I dialed 9-1-1. Yup, you read that right. I dialed 9-1-1. I told them I didn’t know if it was an actual emergency, but I thought I might need an ambulance to bring the baby to the hospital, just in case he stopped breathing on the way there. Needless to say, my husband arrived just a minute or two before the paramedics, and by the time they walked through the door, my son had stopped screaming and the rash was, well, still a rash. No tarantulas. No throat swollen shut. Just a really itchy baby.
After the paramedics left, my husband made a new rule that I was not allowed to call an ambulance without getting his approval first. The pediatrician thought it was absolutely hysterical that I’ve been to war but got so shook up over a bad case of hives. “Somebody call 9-1-1! My baby’s got a rash!” he teased. When he finally stopped laughing, he said he thought the whole episode was very telling of how we are wired as parents and how powerful our protective instincts are.
“They’re our world,” he sympathized. “Everything’s different when it’s your child.”
It turns out that every once in a while, the baby still breaks out in hives, although not quite as bad as the first time he scared me to death. A mosquito bit him on the eyebrow this summer, and the little guy’s eye totally swelled shut for a day. Yesterday something—we’re not sure if it was a spider or a mosquito—bit him on the neck, and he started growing a second head. My husband thought maybe we should call the doctor, but I persuaded him to let me try some Benadryl first.
Several hours later, I found my husband holding my son on his lap in the rocking chair, thermometer in hand. We have one of those very cool thermometers that you can hold right up to his forehead and get a read. But now, my husband was holding it up to my son’s neck. This was the second time he tried taking the temperature of the bug bite.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“It’s still 110 degrees,” he said, looking at me with the pouty face that comes over him when he’s concerned about our son.
“The bug bite?”
“Yeah.”
I asked him why he kept trying to take the temperature of the bite, and he said that’s how you can tell if there’s an immune response or an infection.
“You wouldn’t even be able to do that if we didn’t have that kind of thermometer,” I said.
He looked at me with his puppy dog eyes, which just made me love him even more—every time I see our son reduce him to a six year old.
“No, but they would do it if we took him to the emergency room,” he replied. I shot him a look of near consternation. Before walking away, I told him,
“Put the baby down. Put the thermometer away.”
And I guess that’s just how we’re wired.
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