never ending story

no, in this case I'm not talking about dad's medical situation. Instead, i'm talking about Felix's "medical" situation. Anyway, he's had a cough of various shapes and sizes since about October and as you know at the end of December he had a rip-roaring ear infection followed by a stomach virus a couple weeks ago, followed by instructions by our pediatrician to go ahead and take the amoxicillin we didn't use before because Felix still had fluid behind his ear drum and she was afraid it would turn into a sinus infection. So a week ago we started him on his amoxicillin. During that time his mood has greatly improved though his nose has not. In fact, he now has a cruddy hacking cough and runny nose, and some sneezing too. Clear snot, though, for the most part. Well, last night he looked like he was starting to get a rash. light pink spots all over his chest and even on his face. Hrm. Well, this morning it seemed a bit more pronounced. And when I got home from work today the kid looked painfully rashy, covered head to toe in a dark pink rash. The thing of it was, despite looking terribly rashy, he was perfectly happy, in fact in some ways seems even happier than he has been, just following the trajectory of his "recovery" I guess. So, he looks horrible...looking at him makes me feel like scratching myself all over. But he doesn't appear the be itchy at all, or even uncomfortable at all.

So it's pretty disturbing to look at. I get on webMD and look up chicken pox. Well, maybe, but it seems to be too dense of a rash for chicken pox. Then we look up measles and, holy shit, it looks just like measles! But he was vaccinated (I looked at his records, he got them at the beginning of the summer) and measles is supposed to be incredibly rare in the USA. Hrm. Andrea's freaked out because she thinks he may have an immune defficiency. Now, in most cases that seems a little nuts, but given my family's medical history (my brother had an immune problem when he was a baby...got chicken pox 3 times!) its not something you can just rule out. The nanny thought the rash was caused by the only thing that was different between yesterday and today, which is that he was eating red grapes yesterday and today. Ok, logical, rational, not unreasonable...but when you see pictures of measles and they look just like whats on Felix, its hard to shake it. I keep thinking, "Well, we know it's not bacterial because he's been on antibiotics for seven days now. If it is caused by a virus, there's nothing they can do but treat the symptoms, which he has none of. No fever, no soar throat, no aches, not vomiting or diarrhea, no pneumonia. The kid is happy as pigs in mud. So what do we do?" We of course get on the old Google-o-meter and start looking for pictures of rashes. It certainly looks like measles (you can google "looks like measles") but despite the endless pages and pictures describing and documenting measles, they all have something very much in common: they almost immediately state how rare it is for anyone in the US to contract measles IN the US. So then i get to thinking...he's been on the amoxicillin for a week, maybe its related to that? The drug info says it can cause a rash, hives, siezures, and death. Have you ever really read the list of possible side-effects on any prescription drug? Good grief.

Anyway...so I google "Amoxicillin rash" and BADA_BING. Describes a rash that shows up between day 5 and day 16 of amoxicillin cycle, is not itchy or irritating at all, and goes away in a few days. I then look for pictures and again, find amoxicillin rash that looks EXACTLY like what Felix's rash looks like. Big sigh of relief.

That's not to say that's exactly what it is, but so far it makes the most sense. Also, it lets us know that if he does start to show other symptoms we can rule in or out that or other things and take him to the doctor. But really, unless he starts acting sick or his rash turns into big hairy eyeballs all over his body, we're not going to worry too much.

Go google.