Thursday, September 18, 2008

No Major League Baseball for you, young lady!

I had to put Christie on steroids this week. Last Friday, she got a stripe of rash on her face. It was a long welt like a hive next to her nose. The next day it was all over her face. By the weekend it spread to her ears and covered hairline to chin. She did not want to go to church and get teased about it on Saturday night. We spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday feeding her Benadryl and Advil and brainstorming what it could possibly be causing it and watching her mouth and tongue very closely for breathing problems.

She put lotion on the welt after it came up, but not before, and not on her whole face. I rated that possibility at 15%. She used a new pillowcase Thursday night, but it had been washed before she put it on her pillow. I gave that a 35% possibility of causing the problem. We were absolutely mystified what the other 50% could be.

I took her to the doctor on Tuesday morning. While we were in the waiting room, I saw the light bulb go on over her head. "Mom, I went to the dentist Thursday!" That was it. Latex gloves. I was a bit surprised by the persistence of the rash after the allergen had been removed, but the doctor said that was almost certainly it.

It has been a long, slow heal. The welts went from puffy and white to raw and sore like a sunburn in great vertical stripes on her face. If the rash were on her arms or back, I think we would have skipped the Prednisone and just let nature take its course. But on her face, it's so painful and so shocking to look at, that I took pity on her and agreed to the drugs.

Nasty stuff, Prednisone.

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