Two weeks to the day after his open-heart surgery and one day before his Papaw's surgery, Little Boy decided life just wasn't exciting enough. He decided to pop out some hives all over his body. This after running low-grade fevers for 4 days. I called the pediatrician, who said to give him Benadryl and let him know if it got worse.
Yesterday, he was digging at his ears and still running a fever. He only had two little hives on the back of his neck, so I thought maybe this was getting better. I took him to see the doctor about the persistent fever. He said everything looked fantastic -- no obvious signs of infection. I walked out with no explanation for the fevers, but assured that he was being a normal one-year-old.
Today he woke up covered with welts. Oh yeah, and that fever. But he's drinking formula, eating Cheerios, crawling around, playing, acting fairly normal.
I just don't like these persistent hives, so I called the pediatrician's office again and asked where I should start trying to find the source of the hives. Should I work on stuff he's eating, or work on environmental things like laundry detergent?
The physician's assistant asked what has changed in the last week.
Well, everything really, since he was in the hospital! He had a blood transfusion in surgery, then spent a week in a pretty hypo-allergenic environment and drinking their brand-name formulas. Now he's home, where I just changed my detergent, I feed him store-brand formula, and we have a cat who likes the outdoors. We eat all sorts of things because up til now, no-one has anything more than seasonal allergies.
At first, they recommended switching to Dreft or Ivory laundry soap to see if that helps.
Then they talked to the doctor, who said hives are a common indication of illness. So they do go along with this mysterious fever. He said keep giving him Benadryl and expect the hives to last a week or more. If anything gets worse, bring him in.
I'm glad to avoid another trip to the doctor, but I have to confess, my suspicious-mom radar is beeping a low-level alert. You'd think after having two relatively healthy kids, I'd be more laid-back about stuff like this.
