Next time I'll look sooner...

I've discovered that I'm the kind of mom that tends to 'play down' events that often bring discomfort and even some tears to the lives of my kids.  Example--I wait a bit after my kids fall on the ground, to see if they can handle the situation and work through it.  When cuts and bruises happen I let the boys know that Heavenly Father made our bodies to get better, so even though there might be a scrape, they will be okay.  You know, that kind of thing.  Well, a week ago today, this plan kind of back-fired on me!

Our oldest son came home from school and casually mentioned that he itched on his legs.  I continued what I was doing and just reminded him to rub the itch instead of scratching.  All seemed well.  I can recall back now that there were a few additional times that he mentioned this 'itching', but nothing seemed strained or concerned in his voice, so there was no real investigation...until just before bed-time. 

Here it comes, can you sense it?

Dinner is over and things are being cleaned up for the night when my son begins to cry as he says "my ankle hurts so bad--I can't move it".  Okay, at this point there are enough cautionary ques that I walked over to him and asked him to show me where he hurt.  He proceeded to pull up his pant leg and show me his right ankle--which at this point was so swollen and red that I couldn't even see the signs of the bone underneath!  I then noticed other bright red welts, of varying sizes on his leg.  The request for him to remove his pants came with the further discovery of yet more of these extremely itchy welts.  Off came the shirt revealing more on his trunk and arms.  For whatever reason, his upper neck and face were spared!  At this time of night our doctor's office was closed, so I tried to keep things calm and proceeded getting everyone ready for bed.  I got out the Benadryl--at least I could try to bring some relief to that awful itching that he couldn't seem to stop.  The good thing about all of this was he didn't have any other symptoms.  No fever, no breathing difficulties, the welts (hives) didn't form any kind of blister or head on them, there was just the appearance of some sort of allergic reaction.  While I was stumped as to their cause and pretty concerned, I didn't feel the need to rush off to the hospital.  A short time later, the Big Guy Lowe returned home from a late meeting.  After explaining everything to him we decided to get our son out of bed (where he was calmly sleeping) so we could both take a good look.  Gratefully, the Benadryl was working and I could tell that some of the swelling in his ankle had already started to go away.   He was given a blessing and we put him back to bed.

The next few days we were in contact with our doctors as we tried to figure out what had caused such a strong reaction.  I went into the school to talk with our son's teacher, scoured our home for anything new, and interrogated our kids about everything they had eaten...but we couldn't find a cause!

Gratefully, by Sunday our son was doing much better!  Hardly any hives left and the itching was almost gone!  While I hope our son never has to experience that again, it did get us out of Saturday soccer games in the pouring rain. :)  In retrospect, I wish I would have investigated my son's mentions of itching sooner than I did.  In the future, I'll try to do so, but for the most part I'm a firm believer in playing things down.  Oh well, all's well that ends well?  That's what we think at least!