The first of my unfortunate events occurred while my feeding therapist was visiting. I've been very enthusiastic about trying new foods, so the plan was to expand my variety by branching out a bit in the lunch category where most of my foods are still in the puree form. Top of the list came from ingredients in this cabinet...
Well it had nothing to do with the Flax or Sunflower oils. And Pam didn't have anything to do with it either. No, it was the obvious culprit, Mr. Peanutbutter, mixed with honey.
That sunny, warm afternoon in late winter left my entire face swollen, my throat an itchy mess, and rather quickly choked my breathing. 911 was called and an ambulance carted me off to the ER where the doc gave me a little something we like to call "Liquid Energy" and things started to get back to normal after a seven hour stint in the ER, although my face was swollen with both eyes slightly blackened for the next three days.
Needless to say, I don't eat anything remotely related to peanutbutter or its by-products. Who could have guessed?
The next series of unfortunate happenings occurred just prior to leaving for Carmel. There was a fever, some vomit (That's such an awesome word. You can put such emphasis on it, really make it sound just spectacularly descriptive. Yum), and then the morning of the trip, some small red bumps. I've decided not to share any of the gory pictures, just the details, but as our week-long much needed vacation progressed, more and more of these tiny red pimple-like protuberances kept appearing around my mouth and mic-key button. Mom and Dad conversed at some length about what these little skin disturbances could be, and while the obvious seemed to be some mild form of the chicken pox, the reality was much more sinister. When we returned home from our little getaway, I went in to the doctor and learned the spots were actually the skin manifestations of a staph infection. Round One of antibiotics began.
During the treatment of the skin infection, Mom and Dad noticed some reddening around the mic-key button. By the end of the 10-day cycle of drug therapy, the redness and bumps were gone. Unfortunately, two days after the drugs ended, the redness returned at the mic-key button site and quickly got angry.
Another trip to the doctor's office and it appeared the skin infection around the mic-key button had progressed into cellulitis. Round Two of antibiotics. This time, before leaving the doctor's office, they swabbed the affected area and sent it to the lab for a culture, to see specifically what kind of bacteria they were dealing with, wanting of course to rule out MRSA.
No, penguins have nothing to do with MRSA (a rather nasty bacteria resistant to most common antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections), it's just one of my favorite pics from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Not twenty-four hours later, I woke Dad and threw up all over him. My fever was back, Mom came home early from work, and they were able to get me back to sleep. In the morning, my fever wasn't so high, but after a couple of phone calls to the doctor's office, we ended up in the ER. While sitting in the waiting room, my doctor called and said the culture had come back. Apparently the bacteria they were able to culture was not the Staph bacteria they'd expected (no MRSA, that's good) but rather a Strep A bacteria. Something that could not be treated with my current course of antibiotics. This ER visit ended about six hours later after a really helpful conversation with a pediatric surgeon who said they bacteria they were dealing with are fairly common bacteria that live on the skin, nothing Fringe or X-Files worthy. We got a new antibiotic prescription, some IV antibiotics before we left, and then we were back home.
Although the health crises seemed to have subsided for a bit, life is far from normal at home right now because of the most exciting news of the last four months.
I'm gonna have a new little brother or sister (Mom thinks it's a girl)!
