Last Sunday

Last Sunday was exceptionally normal... Mason had a touch of a cough so he stayed home with Dave and Luke and I went to church.  I taught 4-year old sunday school and then Luke and I headed to Kroger to pick up a few last minute things for dinner.  We got home and I got started on getting lasagna ready (Dave's birthday was Wednesday, but with all the back-to-school craziness and his work schedule we decided to celebrate with my family Sunday night).  I got the lasagna prepped and a cake made while Dave ran up to work to check on the lunch rush and when he got home I headed up to school to make an appearance at the Ice Cream Social welcoming the new Head of School.  When I got back, the lasagna was in the oven and all my boys were hot and sweaty from a wrestling session/pillow fight.  Mason was acting fine, but Dave and I noticed what looked like patches of heat rash right by his underarms.  We thought it was weird, but nothing bizarre so we went about our day.  My parents came over around 6, we all ate dinner and after we got the lasagna scrubbed off Mason we set him down to play.  

Here's the pic I took of the lasagna to text to my dad :)

He crawled around the table and then "collapsed" on the floor in tears.  He can be mildly dramatic and loves to get a laugh so we thought that maybe he was playing a game, but when he kept trying to crawl on his toes and we were literally watching welts pop up on his skin we started to be alarmed.  I called Sarah and Dicky and asked their professional opinion and after sending some pictures of the spots via text we headed over to their house.  

This is one of the pics we texted to Sarah - barely there, but still weird...

In the less than 10 minutes that it took us to get him packed up and over there (Luke went home with my parents), he started burning up, became really flushed and his knees started to swell.  Dicky checked him out but sent us on our way to Acute Kids. We got to Acute Kids, they took his temperature, did a strep test and told us to take him to the ER at Children's ASAP.  There wasn't really any explanation or predicted diagnosis, just a very real sense of urgency to go NOW.  They called ahead for us and when we got to Children's we told them our name and were immediately ushered into triage.  The triage nurse took one look at his knees (and his now stiff body) and brought us straight into a room - we hadn't even sat down when the doctor came in, listened to his ears and told us he had a "raging" double ear infection, listened to his chest and sent us to get a chest x-ray for pneumonia and told us that he probably had either HSP or Serum Sickness.

Mason had the chest x-ray, which confirmed pneumonia in his left lung (seriously - he didn't even have a major cough!) and afterward had a dose of benedryl.  We hung out for a while to wait for the medicine to start working and almost immediately the hives started going down. We were told it was not HSP and probably serum sickness, and to follow up with our pediatrician in the morning.

This is what his rash looked like right before we left (after Benedryl):

Mason and I watching Olympics Gymnastics while we wait to get discharged (you can see that his legs and ankles were lookin' a little bit puffy)

Not loving that it hurts when he tries to crawl :( Poor baby!

We stopped to drop off his prescriptions at Walgreens on the way home and when Dave went back to get it  45 mins later (around 11:30 p.m.) they told us they had "lost" our paperwork and hadn't filled either of the orders.  Thus ensued the process of them having to call Children's... talk to his nurses... talk to the Doctor... etc., etc., and THEN finally fill them).  Dave got home after midnight, we gave Mason a dose of each of his antibiotics and passed out.

Monday morning I took Mason in to the pediatrician and welts were popping out like CRAZY! (I hadn't given him any benedryl because the dosage the hospital gave me seemed weird and with the whole lost prescription thing I wasn't confident that it had been communicated correctly blah blah blah so I was waiting for the pediatrician to give me the dosage).

Our regular pediatrician was out, so we saw his nurse practitioner and upon first glance she said he didn't seem sick at all (that's my Mason!)  But once we pulled off his shirt it was a different story.  As we sat there more and more bumps appeared - all over his body...

His knees started to swell again...

... as did his fingers (but he wouldn't let a little swelling stop him from chowing on animal crackers!)

They started coming up on his face as well...

I gave him a dose of benedryl in office, she added a steroid to his two antibiotics and we were on our way.

We dropped off our new prescription and then headed to MCA to pick up some testing materials I had to grade (I was supposed to proctor an algebra readiness exam that morning).  We picked up our medicine, headed home and Mason ate lunch and then took a 4 hour nap.  The steroid must have done the trick, because here was Mason at dinner that night (less than 24 hours earlier he was in the ER!).  He and I were going to stay home from the planned bday dinner, but he was doing so well we decided to go ahead and join in.

We were home together for one last day of summer (which we spent doing laundry and playing) and then on Wednesday he went to Miss Lisa's while Luke and I went to in-service.  Thursday he had a follow-up and I thought it was going to be 10 minutes, in and out, he looks great - bye!  BUT turns out his lungs sounded the same and his ears looked the same so we ended up doing a breathing treatment in the office and then leaving with a prescription for stronger antibiotics and breathing treatments 3 times a day. UGH.

:

He's hanging in there... but we do have to swaddle him in order to give him the treatments.  It's difficult, but it kind of a nice 6-7 minute snuggle session :)

Anyway, thanks everyone for your sweet words of encouragement and prayers.  We're staying in the next few days and resting lots - but I can't imagine he'll be anything less than perfect by Monday :)  He goes back in two weeks to check on his ears - but I'll keep you posted.