Where It All Began

The Cottage

It was the summer of 2010 and my family was enjoying a much needed vacation. We had decided to haul the whole family to a beautiful lake in Northern Michigan so we could visit my grandma at her cottage (aka "The Cottage"). I was 5 years old the last time I had made the trip to the cottage, so I was very excited to be there. Our youngest son "J" was 15 months old at the time.

I packed a bottle of sunblock that also contained insect repellent for the kids... since I figured we'd run into our fair share of insects staying on the lake. However, I regret to say, I wasn't very diligent in applying the kids with lotion as often as I probably should have. The weather was much cooler than the scorching hot Arizona summers we were used to, and we seemed to find ourselves in shaded areas more often than not. As a result the sunblock... and therefore the insect repellent... was not a high priority to any of us.

A couple of days into the trip and early one morning... J woke-up crying and rubbing his lower back. I lifted his shirt to find a baseball sized, bright red, hot-to-the-touch, burning welt. There was a dark red ring around the perimeter of the welt and a small whitish bump in the center that made me think he must have been stung by something. Our daughter has an allergy to bee stings and I figured this must be the case with J as well. We searched for a stinger but found nothing. We immediately gave him a dose of Benadryl and Motrin (Naturally I had packed the entire medicine cabinet to calm my motherly paranoia of being unprepared) and an ice pack to hold on his wound. I fully expected this to be the end of all the sting-related drama... little did I know it was only the beginning.

The Motrin did little to ease the pain or swelling and the Benadryl did absolutely nothing to calm the reaction. It was Independence Day and I ended up calling our Pediatrician on-call back in Arizona for some advice. In spite of all the medications given, the dark red ring around the wound was growing larger and the welt was getting bigger. J was absolutely miserable... and this in turn made everyone miserable. All the doctor could do was reassure me we were handling things correctly and to continue dosing him with Benadryl and Motrin. The only consolation was that although the Benadryl seemed to have zero effect on the wound itself... it at least had the effect of making J very sleepy. Needless to say... my poor baby did a lot of sleeping during the next several days. When he did manage to stay awake he was not a happy camper. I would have to say it probably wasn't until the fifth or sixth day that the swelling and redness finally started to decrease. It took several more weeks (like 15 to be exact) for the wound to finally scab over and heal (2 years later and I can still see the scar on his back).

I had no idea what was going on. I started to wonder if he had possibly been bitten by a deer tick and contracted Lyme Disease or something even worse. I was very bothered by the fact that the Benadryl didn't seem to help at all and that many weeks later the wound was smaller but still there. Maybe this wasn't an allergic reaction after all. What's more is that since we had returned home, several more of these sores and welts had started popping up on different areas of his body. He had also begun running a low-grade fever. I had to consider the possibility that this was something much worse than originally thought. I turned to the Internet for answers... but only found myself with more questions and concerns. We made an appointment and visited the Pediatrician. He was as baffled as I was... by this point the sores were starting to look more like a skin rash as there were several lesions grouped together on different areas of his body. The Pediatrician drew blood to screen for allergies, check his blood counts, and look for infections.  He gave J a prescription for antibiotics, oral steroids and a hydrocortisone ointment.  Last but not least, he gave us a referral to the Dermatology Department at the local Children's Hospital and instructed me to make an appointment. I felt relieved... surely they would have the answers we were looking for.