The Poole Family: Hives from Hades

**This post contains pictures of Matt's Erythema Multiforme rash. It looks terrible so I felt it deserved a warning!

Matt's immune system remains subpar even though he is doing better than he had been! Having him at home with our babysitter has made a huge difference but he is undoubtedly going to get cold viruses every now and then. After having one that we couldn't get to go away, we ended up taking him to the doctor for some issues with his stools, runny nose, cough, etc. She did a stool culture and then put him on some antibiotics: cefprozil. He has had hives in the past from augmentin but thankfully not from anything else. Well, the upper respiratory infection went away, but on day 9 out of 10 of the antibiotics, I noticed he had hives. I racked my brain thinking what could be the cause of them- he is already on 2 different daily antihistamines! I didn't think it would be the antibiotic since he had been on it for almost 10 days. The hives were small and didn't seem to be bothering him at all so I didn't think anything of it. I gave him some benadryl that night and continued his antibiotic. The next day, the hives were still there- just more of them. At this point, I thought it had to be the antibiotic because nothing else had changed, he hadn't eaten anything new, used any new detergents or lotions, etc. I gave him some more benadryl and figured they would go away completely on their own in a day or two. I was wrong. Matt had something called erythema multiforme (EM). A classic sign of this is a hive that doesn't move around. For instance, all of his spots stayed in place instead of fading and changing locations. And not only did they stay in place but they spread and continued to get worse over time. I took him to the doctor Tuesday morning who suspected he had EM and told me to keep an eye on him. He gave us a prescription antihistamine to help Matt sleep since that had been impossible the night before. It just so happened that we had a visit scheduled with his allergy/immunology doctor this week! What perfect timing since had we not had that visit already scheduled, I may have taken him to the ER on Wednesday with the way his skin looked. She said he definitely does not need to take cephalosporins ever again. Lesson learned: antibiotics can cause allergic reactions at any point in the treatment. Thankfully Matt did not experience any other symptoms that can accompany EM including fever and joint pain. I was actually very fortunate in that if you didn't know he had hives under his shirt and hair, you probably couldn't tell by the way he acted because they only really bothered him at night.
As a side note, Matt has also been diagnosed as Failure to Thrive. This means he isn't growing like he should be for a child his age. Since last year, he has dropped 3 growth curve percentiles and his weight isn't budging. I am not sure of what the plan is from this point forward. The immunologist did some labwork on him and we will see what speech therapy says next week. We may end up with a consult from a GI doctor when it's all said and done. I am very proud of him and how much he has been eating lately, but it doesn't seem to be doing the trick. Prayers please for my stubborn mystery child. I love him to pieces!

Sunday night- Just a few spots!

Monday morning

Monday night

Tuesday night- Thankfully had taken him to the doctor that morning. You can see the how the areas stay in one place and only get worse in the next progression of pictures.