Tavis is allergic to ant bites. Every time he gets one he swells. He got one on his middle toe once and his entire foot swelled and he couldn't wear a shoe for a week.
Friday night he got one on his wrist while playing baseball out in the front yard. It makes him mad when he gets one because he knows he is going to suffer for at least a week from it.
By Saturday morning the entire bottom half of his arm was swollen and it looked tight, like it was a balloon about to pop. We had a very busy Saturday and I tried to watch it to make sure I shouldn't be concerned. By lunchtime it looked like the swelling was getting a little red 'tail'. My 'mommy sense' didn't like this. All morning in the back of my head I thought I'd read or been told somewhere that if a red streak breaks away from a bite that is bad.
We were 40 minutes from home at a park with friends and I decided to call our pediatrician at home (he is a friend of Jason's - a very nice connection to have). I gave him the history of the bite and he asked me if I thought the stripe/tail was more than an inch or two long. I assured him it was about 10 inches long and all the way up to his armpit. He didn't like that information and told me that means staph infection and if it had made it up to his armpit that means it had gotten to his lymph nodes. Since he didn't have fever he just told us to give him something for the pain (tylenol), something for the itch (benedryl at night and zyrtec during the day) and we had to pick up antibiotics at 10:30 Saturday night on our way home.
He has been miserable most of the day, but he has had three doses of antibiotics now and I feel like the swelling is going down. As long as he doesn't get fever (and dr. thought we were past that point because we caught it early) we are good.
Moral of the Story: Go with your Mommy gut feeling. If I had not called and gotten him started on antibiotics I'm sure we would be in the hospital today dealing with a much uglier problem. And, if there is a red tail to a bite, you may want to have it checked.
Consider this, just another Mommy Tip!!
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You guys and your crazy medical stories!!
ReplyDeleteYikes! I would have had no idea. Glad for the info.
ReplyDeleteLucy has this SAME PROBLEM! Her foot swells and she can't wear a shoe or walk on it and it seems to be ants! And she had a red streak once too and we went to Pediatric Diagnostic...I took pictures, but she asked me not to blog on her foot :) Poor Tavis, I am so sorry! It's so miserable. I'm so paranoid about the field at church now, because there are so many fire ants.
ReplyDeleteOh, poor Tavis! That sounds terribly uncomfortable! On Mindy's comment - I got a fire ant bite from church the other day...it hurt for 3 days and I still have a scar. I thought about telling them but assumed they knew there were some fire ant mounds around the grass.
ReplyDeleteGoodness! Glad you caught it early! That's crazy how fast it got infected. Good job being in tune with your mom instinct!
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