The overnight medical drama

So we had a dramatic turn of events with our little wonder last night... Caroline's little bumps kept getting worse and worse, and soon her hands and feet were all red and swollen. We sent pictures to Dr. Granny, who decided it was probably worth a trip to the doctor. Of course the doctor's office was closed for the day by this point. Then we discovered she had a rash around her belly button, which was cause for enough concern that my mom said to call her (other) pediatrician. The pediatrician said we should have her seen that night in the ER, even though she had no fever and didn't have any changes in her behavior, just because she's so young and they don't like to take chances. So, Mike and I went rushing off to the ER around 10pm last night. Luckily, we were seen pretty quickly. The doctor really didn't know what she had--he said he had only ever seen something like that once in his 10 years in practice, and it was something a little random, but benign. So he said we should be seen by a dermatology specialist at Boston Children's Hospital the next day. We went home and her rash changed a bit overnight- got more splotchy on her arms and legs, but her feet were a little less swollen and her belly button wasn't so red. She stayed up from about midnight - 3am, eating and fussing, which wore me out, but then she slept well until 9am, only waking up for one feeding.

In the morning, I got a bit of a run around when I tried to call to schedule her appt with the dermatologist- I guess they wrote down the wrong name of the doctor or something- and I almost had a mental breakdown thinking she wasn't going to be seen. But eventually we did get an appointment. The dermatologist seemed pretty confident that she just had a bad case of hives, which is unusual in babies this young and we don't know what set it off. She said it might stick around for up to 6 weeks, which sounds miserable, but Caroline doesn't seem too bothered by it- mostly it just scares her parents! At least it is just hives and not some other scary disease.

I guess there is a family history of hives on Mike's side- Mike got the hives every time the 1984 olympics came on the TV. Talk about bizarre!
With Grandma before the bumps got too bad...

Yikes! She looks like she belongs in a medical journal. So spotted!

With Granny at the doctors office