What's New With You?

i don't really have new stuff to blog at you about. i DO, however, have some OLD stuff to blog at you about. the hives saga continues here in latina-land. it is day 13. or is it day 14? i don't know, but tomorrow will make two weeks with no break from the hives.

yesterday i made the mistake of not giving max any antihistamines until 5:15 p.m. and this was after only giving him the inferior benadryl monday afternoon. why did i do this, you ask? well, i did this because 1) max didn't have very many welts yesterday morning (just a few on one leg and one or two intermittently popping up on his face) and 2) max didn't seem all that itchy and 3) max has once again developed a cold, and for some reason benadryl is better than atarax at controlling his runny nose.

throughout the day yesterday, i noticed more welts gradually appearing, but i held off on giving max any atarax because the idea of keeping my 13 month old loaded down with prescription drugs wigs me out a little. and because atarax makes him hyper (and so does benadryl). hyper = doesn't sleep. and because the welts usually subside a little when max is sleeping. so i waited until after naptime and second snack to give max drugs. alas, the welts kept getting worse (there were more after his nap than there were before he went to sleep), so i have him some atarax (well, the generic version).

max was still pretty blotchy and red this morning, so i guess taking him off the atarax is a bad idea. i did call the pediatrician AGAIN on monday. since, you know, last week he said that if the hives persisted into this week we'd "have more work to do to figure out the cause." and he told me doodly squat. his advice: wait it out. WTF?

true, since we started atarax, max has been much happier with many fewer welts. BUT the hives are STILL THERE. and not taking atarax leads to many more. so the atarax is definitely helping, but what i really want is to find out what is causing the hives, which i need help with.

apparently <1% of hives cases are caused by food allergies. but i am pretty much down to thinking it might be a food allergy. specifically, a milk allergy. max has been drinking whole milk for just over a month. long enough to have developed a reaction but not so long as to rule it out as the cause of the hives. in some cases, processing milk breaks down the proteins enough that they don't cause an allergic reaction (i.e., some people with milk allergies can still eat cheese). and in most cases, children outgrow milk allergies. and guess what? kids with eczema? which max has? are more likely to develop a milk allergy! ahhh! well, really kids with eczema are more likely than other kids to develop any allergy. but anyway.

there are blood tests that can identify food allergies. not just skin tests (which would do absolutely NO GOOD right now, since max can't stop breaking out in hives). perhaps i can convince the pediatrician that we need to do this before i go eliminating dairy from max's diet. that would make him sad.

i'm thinking i need to call the doc back again anyway. we have to figure this out. i'm going nuts, and no one is sleeping well. but if we take max off the antihistamine that keeps him from sleeping, he breaks out all crazy-like and can't sleep anyway because he itches.