Bubba's First Allergic Reaction

It's been an eventful week around here. The first thing that happened was that someone woke up VERY puffy one day.

He had gotten some sort of bite on his earlobe about a week before. It got red and slightly swollen for about a day, but then looked like it was healed after that. I wasn't terribly worried because it's getting to be summer and bug bites are going to happen.

When I did worry was when he woke up not only with that earlobe swollen and red again, but his neck under his ear and his eyelids were all puffed up as well. I called the pediatrician who didn't have any openings, so it was off to Urgent Care. Fun.

He did really well there; no fussing or crying. The doctor said that it did look like he had a reaction to a bite, but that it wasn't severe so we didn't have to worry about it. He did, however, discover that the boy had an ear infection on the opposite ear and sent us home with a prescription for Amoxcillin to go with the medicine for the reaction. Believe it or not, this is the boy's first ear infection. We had no clue!

Several days later we bought a couch. You don't even have to ask where we got it.

At first I was skeeved out about buying a couch at Goodwill, but then my husband pointed out that it's no different than getting it from a friend of a friend or off Craigslist. It's microfiber and passed the sniff test. Best of all? It cost $80, so if someone (or someones) ruin it the way the last couch got ruined, it's no big deal. We've come to the realization that buying really nice furniture with a toddler in the house is not the best investment idea.

I vacuumed it really well, we went over it with a lint roller to get any dog hair we missed, washed all the cushion covers, sprayed it down with Febreze, and it was good to go.

The very next day, the boy woke up looking like this:

I totally freaked out. The rash was head to toe! He even had it on the palms of his hands and the bottoms of his feet. Could he be allergic to the Febreze we sprayed on the couch? Something about the couch itself? Could it be the Amoxcillin? He had been taking it for almost a week, wouldn't there have been a reaction sooner? Could it be chicken pox? He's been vaccinated though! What on Earth was going on???

After much phone tag, a freak out because my iPhone thought I no longer had a SIM card, a visit to my own doctor, and finally, a visit to the pediatrician's office, he was diagnosed with a penicillin allergy. Thankfully I had not given him any that morning after seeing the rash, just in case. He's got a different antibiotic now and is getting Zyrtec. Poor kid is still itchy though.