Quick, before I get Sidetrack'd

Tying in to my previous post, let’s talk a little about antibiotics…

As a child I loved amoxicillan. No, really, I loved it. I referred to it as the “pink bubble gum” medicine, and I probably would have drank it straight from the bottle had I been allowed.

I was pretty upset the first time they told me I was big enough to take pills instead of getting that yummy pink elixir.

In college I worked as a pharmacy tech and always liked filling amoxicillan scripts because, invariably, some would slosh out of the bottle as I mixed and I could lick it off my fingers.

So, when Little was prescribed amoxicillan to treat her ear/sinus infection I was glad we would have a medicine that would taste good and it wouldn’t be a fight to get her to take. I wasn’t disappointed; she was quite willing to take her medicine and asked for it several times between doses. The issue arose about four doses into her ten day course.

About 12:15 the Sunday morning after Christmas Little woke up whining and pulling at her pajamas. Matt went into her room to see what was wrong and thought she was complaining about the zipper on her footed sleeper, so he changed her pajamas and she laid back down.

About 20 minutes later she was calling for us again and Matt went to see what she needed. I heard her say something about her tummy hurting so I followed him in thinking, “oh no, not a stomach bug.” When I got in there she was scratching at her back. Again, we got her settled down and back to bed.

Another 15 minutes or so passed, and we heard her calling one more time. This time she was really scratching at her back, so I pulled up her shirt to see what she was scratching at. All over her back were red whelps about the size of the palm of my hand and each whelp had white hives on it.

I immediately called the after hours nurse and explained what was going on. She said, “Poor thing. You know it’s bad when you have hives on your hives!” I was told to give her some benadryl and watch to make sure she didn’t have any additional symptoms.

Fortunately, the benadryl cleared up the issue and the next day we were able to get a different antibiotic prescribed.

In talking to people about what occurred, a couple of people told me that penicillin allergies don’t usually show up the first time the person takes a penicillin drug. I don’t know if that means that she is more sensitive to it or not, but we’re not going to find out if we can help it.

And as warped as this sounds, I’m kind of disappointed that she won’t get to enjoy pink bubble gum medicine throughout her childhood.