I worry. I like to say “It’s What I Do” when people get on my case about the things I worry about. I feel much better when I worry, when I plan for the worst and the next to worse thing happens, life is so much better because I was expecting something just a little bit..well..worse.

I worry about everything, but mostly, I worry about Logan.

This past month has been bad. He is getting headaches three or four times a week. A cookie or children’s Tylenol will take care of it in under an hour and they do not return. That day at least. I won’t even get into my worries about his blood sugar. Instead, lets worry, together, about his hives.

Yesterday, Sunday, at about 5pm, Logan was standing in the living room talking to us. He casually put his hands in his pants and began to scratch. I asked him to remove his hand from his pants and he complied, but said “It’s itchy down there”. I pulled down his pants, which was easy to do becuase he was wearing Blakes pants and no belt and both his thighs were covered in hives. And also his one butt cheek. from hip to knee he was one big hive.

I gave him an antihistamine and told him not to scratch and within an hour all was well again.

Until bedtime tonight when I noticed Logan had the start of another set of hives. I gave him another antihistamine and sent him to bed. Half an hour later I saw his light was on and went in to yell at him for not being in bed, and I couldn’t help but see his hives had, despite the antihistamine, gotten worse.

Hives that do not respond to treatment are not good, FYI.

I took him into the hospital - I’m taking literary license here, our hospital is a 10 room clinic with x-ray, blood lab and three doctors on staff.(one doc at a time)

I told the doc about the hives and we talked about how he hasn’t been exposed to any new food, and that none of our soaps or detergents had changed either. He wasn’t too concerned and told me to give Logan childrens Benadryl four times a day till they went away.

I told him about Logans headaches and we discussed that they are not in the area kids get eye strain headaches, so glasses are not the problem. He did some fancy follow the light/ look at my nose movements with Logan and told me that so long as the headaches are responding to Tylenol, it is OK.

Then the doctor checked his lympnodes in his neck, armpits and groins and suddenly, it got a bit tense in the room. He measured two nodes in Logans neck, and one in his groin and told me that swollen lymph nodes are not usually considered a problem at this size (think : pea) that concern comes as they grow to 1cm or larger, but the fact that he has so many swollen nodes, combined with the headaches and the hives concerns him. He mentioned something along the lines of an autoimmune uhm something, and how hives are like the immune systems way of waving a red flag that something is wrong.

He decided that we should continue the antihistamine route, except asked us to change from the no name adult strength I was using, and use benadryl instead. Hopefully the hives will respond to treatment. I was also told that a headache that does not respond to Tylenol, weakness, joint pain or trouble breathing were signs to drive him into the city to the ER.

Left unsaid were all the mights. Or what we do if the hives don’t respond to treatment. Or that I should never ever Google swollen lymph nodes, hives and headache and read the pages upon pages of horrifying results.

So worry with me, but also feel free to hope that the hives are gone by morning, never to return.

I’m not too hopeful. The above photo was taken at quarter after nine, five minutes after he took his benadryl.

This one was taken just now, at ten thirty.

*worry*

∗ Posted by bluepaintred on 10.19.2009
∗ Uncategorized