Saturday, August 08, 2009

Taking turns

Dima had a much better day yesterday. Instead, Emily decided to be a pain. :)

Emily reverted back to some behavior we haven't seen in a month or 6 weeks. She refused to answer questions and would only repeat whatever was said to her. She was also excessively weepy and whiny.

A couple of days ago we had noticed a scab on her chin which looked like a mosquito bite. She had been scratching at it and it broke open so I'd been putting antibiotic ointment on it. When I got home from work on Friday, I noticed that she seemed to have some sort of rash spreading up one side of her face from that bite area. When I gave the kids their baths, I took her temperature (just for curiosity) and she had a low-grade fever. I also found a few more "bug bites" on her torso which was covered by her shirt (i.e., she should not have gotten bitten there).

My first thought was chicken pox. We don't have any medical history whatsoever on the girls and I have no idea if either of them have ever had chicken pox. But it didn't look quite right for chicken pox. On a hunch, I decided to treat the "bites" and rash-thing instead of the fever, so I gave her some benadryl and sent her to bed.

She woke up in the morning completely free of the mysterious face rash and with all of her "bite" gone except for the one on her chin. I'm guessing she had an allergic reaction to something, but neither Mark not I have figured out what yet. She had a better day of answering questions and was not nearly as whiny. :)

4 comments:

Tami said...

Aaahh...the mysterious childhood rash. Maddie is notorious in our house for having rashes that we have never been able to find the source of. Drives. Me. Nuts.
I finally figured out that one of them has to do with an eczema type skin condition...but that doesn't explain the others.
So glad she's feeling better today and that at least you know WHY she was acting the way she was! :)

Unknown said...

I'm pretty cranky when I have a rash, too. I have allergies, and some strange ones, so I know how she was feeling. So glad it's almost gone!

Anonymous said...

Just curious, why did you wait until you were gonna give her a bath to take her temperature. Do you still take their temps rectally? If you do, you should look into the ear ones, accurate enough and will make you life easy.

Courtney said...

No, we use digital oral thermometers with the kids. All of them are old enough to be able to keep their mouths closed (although it's more work to convinve Emily it should stay closed!). She wasn't acting like she had a fever so I didn't think to take her temp until we were in the bathroom (where the thermometer is).