welter skelter, Part Two

Thursday after lunch I received another call from day care that the red spots were back. I'd sent the benadryl with her, so they gave it to her and I called the doctor. He didn't call back until the end of the day. By that time day care and The Hater and I questioned if these were a delayed reaction to her 1 year shots that she received last week OR some sort of delayed reaction to milk. (On her birthday last week we swapped her over from cow-milk based formula to the real mccoy - red top whole milk.) He thought like we did, it was really unlikely that it was the milk. He told me to bring her to the office if it happened again on Friday, but not to swap her over to soy milk just yet.

And, oh, did it happen again. About 7:30am today day care called to report the welts were back immediately after her morning milk. The office didn't open until 8:30. At 8:15 I left work and picked her up. He worked us right in... and as you can see in the pictures, these were really impressive. (I did one up close so you could see exactly how they all looked.) They had progressed to warm, red, raised welts with blister-like areas. They were located on both thighs, both calves, both upper arms, and across her bottom. She was in no distress, but we were agreed that this was something that warranted more than benadryl. He took pictures and referred her to a pediatric allergist. He started her on Singulair for babies and drew an allergy panel. She is banned from cow-based dairy products until further notice. (The story of holding down my screaming 12 month old while they draw blood is another post altogether. Trauma.)

I brought her home & took these pictures before giving her benadryl & applying benadryl cream to them. We went to the hospital to pick up the Singulair, to Target for vanilla soy milk, then back to day care. By the time we got back to day care the blister-looking areas were gone & the reddened areas were more light pink than red.

This afternoon there are two tiny pink dots on one leg. She likes the soy milk. And she's in a pretty good mood, all things considered.

Hopefully the allergy panel will give us some insight as to what's going on with her. Hopefully the allergist can let us know if this is a delayed reaction to her 1 year shots (somehow triggered by the milk?) or if it's to the milk itself. (The doctor and I both find that really hard to believe since she's been on the cow-based formula since she was about 4 months old, but who knows.) Hopefully we'll get all of this under control before the welts progress further to a more alarming reaction.

The doctor called again. She'll also be taking zyrtec every day with the Singulair until we see the allergist and are told otherwise. We will continue to use the benadryl cream on each of the spots that happen to come up.

By the time I was putting her down for the night the two red dots had progressed to two nickel-sized places, one on top of each thigh, and she had a half-dollar (plus) sized blistery-looking welt on EACH ankle.

I'm very thankful that none of this seems to phase her at all. They look painful and itchy, but thankfully she's only bothered by us wanting her to sit still long enough to look at her.

I will sleep with one ear open to hear every breath she takes tonight through the monitor. Nurse Mom is on duty.