I Pray This Year Only Gets Better...

Seriously, this New Year has already given us tons of crazy adventures. It all started on New Year's Eve when I (the designated driver=NO ALCOHOL) slipped and fell outside my uncle's house. Thankfully every part of my old body remained unharmed, VERY sore, but nothing broken, no trip to the ER. Then as we were leaving and as I slowly and carefully backed out, I backed right into my aunts parked black pickup! Not too much damage on our end, a cracked taillight and a slight dent in the corner of our bumper but it made quite a mess of hers. WTHeck?! Even after all that craziness we decided to go forward with our plans to visit our wonderful friends down in SoCal. We were having a grand time, hanging out, talking, Da'Gorgeouses loved playing and running around with their children and their dog Jax (which Da'Gorgeouses renamed Apple Jacks).

On Saturday night as we were headed to sleep we noticed that Pistol kept scratching her ear, she'd been messing with it earlier that night and had been coughing just a bit. Unfortunately, now that we were in bed and she kept scratching at it, it was getting really red. We took a look at it and told her to stop, turned out the lights and tried to get some sleep. Sure enough the poor kid kept itching and scratching, bad enough to where I turned the light back on and took a look. Her face was covered in hives, and as a looked under her jammies, her entire body was covered hives and her ears must have swelled to at least 4 times their thickness. It really freaked me out, but I tried my best to remain calm and woke up our dear friend to ask her if she had any children's benadryl. Luckily she did and I gave Pistol 1/2 tsp, rubbed Caladryl Clear all over her and put in a call to our local pediatrician. After getting off the phone with her, and having her reassure me that I didn't need to worry unless her breathing changed I gave Pistol the directed additional 1/2 a tsp of benadryl and watched and waited. Lo and behold she puked and her breathing began to get a little more shallow. Now I started to panic and we decided to head straight for the local ER. The drive was short, but seemed long as I tried to keep Pistol awake asking her tons of questions which she slowly and correctly answered but she was extremely lethargic and her breathing seemed labored to me. All I could think of was that if her ears and face were swollen that much what the heck was happening to her throat?! I was glad when we arrived as there was a Triage nurse on hand to assess the patients coming in. I relaxed a bit and figured that if she did stop breathing we were already at the place where they could help her immediately.

Pistol was a trooper through the entire night she didn't even fuss or cry or panic. After the initial assessment they decided she was okay enough to wait in the waiting room, her breathing seemed to have returned to normal but her hives still looked really bad. So we waited our turn, which was only about 45 minutes and Pistol pulled her hat down over her eyes and fell into a deep sleep right there in my arms. Once they took us back and the Dr. came in he managed to freak me out again, and wondered if I'd given her the correct dosage of Benadryl. He woke her up by shoving the tongue depressor down her throat to take a look at what was going on there. She was NOT amused to wake up gagging as even our morning tooth brush ritual which includes brushing her tongue makes her gag! He listened to our account of what she'd eaten that evening and decided that although it was possible that she'd ingested something that gave her an allergic reaction, her throat was so red that the rash might also be related to a throat infection ie. strep throat. So the scary ordeal that began at 11 pm that night finally ended when we returned to our friends home at 4 am the next morning, with a prescription of penicillin, and Benadryl, as well as a warning not to eat any more nuts, or tomatoes?!

I thought we would manage to stay away from the hospitals for a very long time, but I'm very glad that everything turned out okay. Her face is still a little red next to her ears, and she still has a few splotchy areas on her skin, but she isn't itching and she's taking all her medicines just fine!

As for our wonderful visit with our AMAZING friends I'll follow up with a post about them soon!