It happened…
Nine days after starting Lilah on amoxicillin she is now having a reaction of hives. We had only one day left of the medicine, or two doses.
Damn allergic reaction.
Jon woke me up at 5:53 am to tell me Lilah had hives and I of course called my mom to see what I should do and he went to the Mayo Clinic family health book. She’s not wheezing and they’re just getting a worse, now looking better since I put some anti-itch cream on her, but no wheezing which would make it more of an emergency.
I’m just waiting for it to be 8 am so I can call the doctor and see if I need to take her in.
Poor baby, I hate hives.
………..
Well, I called at 8 am on the dot. The nurse said there was no way to tell what the rash is from unless they see it, though she thought it would probably be form the amoxicillin, so I brought her into see the nurse practitioner.
It was an allergic reaction and I’m to give her Benedryl. If it looks as though it’s not clearing up I have a steroid prescription to get filled that should help.
I feel like they are getting worse, but I’ll wait a little bit to see if they affect Lilah. She’s been pretty much her regular Lilah self, just spotted.
I have some pictures so you can feel some sympathy for my poor little girl.
She’s a dalmatian.
her back.
Lilah’s leg after lunch. The others were before lunch.
I think the hives started being more defined in their borders.
I had Judy watch Eden for me so she could have some fun while Lilah got taken care of and I picked Naia up from Julie’s work after the appointment, since it’s right by my doctor’s office and I wasn’t positive that Lilah didn’t have something contagious.
Before I picked Naia up we stopped at Smith’s to get the Benedryl and I got us a couple doughnuts as a treat. The baker there thought Lilah was cute and she felt bad that she had some sort of allergic reaction. We got a couple of free bite sized cookies, though she was just giving them out.
Lilah’s become shy around everyone, grandparents included. I think she may be doing it for attention. ‘If I act like a baby I’ll get more attention’, though Jon will say she’s just shy. There are times she acts shy and doesn’t speak and then there are times she acts shy and doesn’t speak, but she makes baby type motions or sounds. I don’t know what to do with her.
So my worry about my girls having the same allergy as me has manifested itself in Lilah. I guess time will tell if Eden has it also.
We were going to have family pictures taken today, but I forgot about Lilah’s gymnastics’s class that goes from 5:30-6:00 pm. So I rescheduled it for next Wednesday.
It’s not like we can do gymnastics or pictures tonight though. Even if she’s not contagious I don’t want the other parents worrying about her or the other kids shunning her, since it would be the first class and we know no one in it. I also don’t want to worry the teacher with a new student that has a full body rash.
I hope she gets better soon.
September 18th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Last year Brien had a reaction to an antibiotic he was taking. He actually looked like the president of some former USSR country that had Vioxin poisoning. I don’t think Brien let me take any pictures of him. His face became swollen and was really bumpy and slightly purple. His back and chest also became terribly swollen and bumpy. The rash worked its’ way over his body over the course of a few days. It was awful and nothing seemed to help him out.
September 18th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
K that first picture is SO SAD! The look on her face kills me! I hope she gets feeling better soon!
September 19th, 2007 at 11:16 am
I think it’s funny that you remembered the exact time I woke you up. ๐
September 19th, 2007 at 11:31 am
I think anyone who has been painfully shy will sympathize with Lilah. Some people think that they were shy as children, but shyness comes in degrees and many don’t understand the depths that it can reach. If you’ve ever felt trapped by a social situation, unable to think of what to do or say, only wishing that you could escape, that is what I imagine Lilah goes through regularly. For her, social interaction with new or unfamiliar people (or any situation where her social world is threatened like being scolded) is a very intense experience that triggers her flight response and all the involuntary nervous system reactions that implies. This in turn causes her to be evasive and infantile. In a word, Lilah is a sensitive child.
Blaming her for how she reacts in social situations would be like blaming her for having an allergic reaction. Both are highly determined by biological factors, and there is very little choice for her in how she reacts. As her higher cognitive abilities mature, she will eventually learn to compensate for or even entirely overcome her shyness, especially with a understanding, guiding environment. But maturation takes time.
September 19th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Well, I didn’t remember the exact time you woke me up, but I do remember calling my mom at 5:55 am, so I figure it took about 2 minutes to assess the situation and then call, though it may have been 5:54 am that you woke me up at.
My frustration with Lilah’s shyness is I feel that she was doing well and then all of a sudden she doesn’t talk to anyone and she playfully acts like a baby when she does respond lately. I feel as though she likes the attention that being babyish brings her so she goes with it, compared to times that she nervously acts younger or sticks out her tongue or responds like a toddler or baby.
I guess I see a difference in how she acts, so I feel as though there are times she is genuinely nervous or shy and other times where she is acting shy.
I’m trying to figure out if/when she’s acting because when she’s just acting shy and is not genuinely shy I feel she’s crippling herself and it gets frustrating to deal with.
I don’t think you see any difference and I feel that I do see a difference. I don’t know if it’s because I’m around her more or if I’m just noticing it and you look at all her shy behaviors to be for the same reasons where as I don’t.
September 19th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
There is a difference between being shy and just acting like a baby. The way that I try to determine the difference is whether she’s acting nervous at the same time. When she’s happy and acting like a baby, then I don’t think it’s a defense mechanism. That’s when I insist that she act her age. Otherwise, when she seems evasive, I realize why she’s acting childishly and react differently.
When I watch adults interact with her, I see some of them who seem unwittingly (or willfully) ignorant of how she feels. When she doesn’t want to be picked up and grabbed, for example, many adults just don’t seem to know or care. They just scoop her up and assume that she’ll have fun, or something.
Lilah doesn’t have the power (or doesn’t believe that she has it) to enforce her own boundaries. What I’m trying to say is that reading Lilah’s mood requires paying close attention to subtle cues because she won’t tell us “Put me down”, “You scare me”, “I need a hug”, “Do you still love me?”, or “I don’t want to talk right now”.
To help Lilah overcome her shyness requires greater sensitivity and respect for her feelings, in my opinion, not less. If we get frustrated and demanding, it will only compound Lilah’s negative reactions to any given situation.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Oh! Poor baby! How is she doing/feeling now?
September 28th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
[…] Lilah’s hives came out a little with the running so we made her walk with us as Reagan and Eden ran ahead. […]