But even knowing that, we were not prepared for the last 10 days of sick. Maybe because we'd all been sick with a cough and cold and surely it couldn't get harder than that!
It began one morning when Noah came into the kitchen after taking a shower. He saddled up next to me strangely and I was instantly and fully convinced he was trying to steal my bacon. Because he would do that and I do covet my bacon.
Instead, he showed me his arm. A red circle near his wrist with a snaking red line heading up his arm. Our fear was whatever it was, it was heading toward his heart. Not good.
We scrambled to figure out where to go. ER? Doctor? What doctor? He doesn't have a designated MD or seen a doctor since we moved back. We didn't have time to do establishing patient bits. We struggled to find an Urgent Care. I knew where pediatric ones were, for sure, but not adult. They are on every other corner in Portland, but here, not so much!
My mom shooed us out the door and we headed toward Lee's Summit. I was scared, but trying to remain calm. Noah thought I was too calm. At one point he asked me to drive with a little more urgency! We got out of the car and I grabbed my bag and coffee. He was teasing me about bringing something to do and something to drink, but in all fairness I had made him coffee too and stuck a magazine in there for him!
We saw a doc and she diagnosed a staph infection. Maybe from a bug bite. She wrote a script for an antibiotic and told him he could go on to work. We filled the script and were dully warned that he needed to take all 10 days and make every effort to take them at the prescribed intervals to effectively treat the infection.
He decided to stay home and it was a good thing he did. The bactrim immediately started kicking.his.tail. Bad.
We started reading the side effects and it was like Noah had every one. By the next night I was on the phone getting a script for anti-nausea medicine. By the next night I was seriously contemplating asking for a sedative for him. It was bad.
The anti-nausea helped tremendously and we entered a period of what I'll look back on and call the week Noah was pregnant. Listening to him describe his aversion to food, his need to keep something in his stomach, have crackers by the bed, and so on made me chuckle. I didn't return him to Urgent Care, but I did diagnose 1st trimester issues. At times he was talking and I would just nod sympathetically. Pot telling the kettle like.
And then............there were a few red dots on his skin.
He called from work to say he had red dots all over his entire body. I was busy with the kids and quite frankly not fully engaged in what he was saying. I encouraged him to call the Urgent Care. Why not? By then we'd called them enough times that they knew just who we were!
Then he came home. He had spots all.over.his.body. ALL OVER HIS BODY. Like someone emptied an entire pack of pink markers on him in dots. Unbelievable. Obviously an allergic reaction. But because they told him it could not be the drugs (would have showed up earlier) we did not know what he was reacting to. Urgent Car had advised him to take Benadryl and drink water. He was worried and not acting like himself.
Knowing we wouldn't sleep without knowing, we loaded the kids up (this was post Blizzard '11) in the Jeep. When he put Judah's carseat in backwards I knew I needed to drive us because he just wasn't in the right frame of mind.
As it turned out, it was the antibiotics. Stop immediately and never ever take again. Bactrim is notorious for not presenting allergic reaction until days into treatment. Noah had 9 days of medicine on board! Because they had given him bad information over the phone, they refunded our $85 fee.
It's gotten worse. Fever, chills, massive skin reaction...the works. We started calling him Pinkalicous. Georgia saw his stomach and said, "Ew." You can just tell it's miserable. Hot. Itchy. Raw.
Noah's system is slowly working it out. The doctor jokingly suggested tattooing SULFA ALLERGY on him in case he presents to an ER unconcious in the future. I'm strongly considering it! Sulfa family of drugs is not a friend of this family's anymore!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment