The Itchy and Scratchy Show (no...not the Simpsons)

So poor Lee has developed hives, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He woke up on Halloween morning with hives everywhere, we kept him home from school and he and Bret went to the doctor. No problem, just an allergic reaction, take benadryl for the next couple of days and he'll be fine. By the time I got home around 3pm the hives were gone. We continued to give him benadryl through the night, but low and behold he woke up on Thursday covered head to toe again! We washed everything in his room....no for those of you who are asking, we haven't introduced anything new, and no he didn't eat anything new. All through Thursday and overnight the meds were keeping his itching to a minimum so off to school we sent him, much to his horror. Bret dropped off some more medicine at 11:30 and by 1pm the school had called me and said that his hives were back with a vengence and the poor kid was going nuts with the itching. Bret by this time has left for the slope.
So I pick Lee up and make the earlist doctor's appt available, which is not until 5pm. We try an oatmeal bath....no good. We try yet another baking soda bath....does not work. We show up at the doctors at 4:30 and luckily they could get us in. By this time poor Lee is just about in tears, and is constantly checking various parts of his body to see if the hives have changed, moved, gotten bigger, or smaller. The doctor thinks that he has some sort of virus that isn't making him sick, but that his body is waging war against. The kicker is that we have no way of knowing how long this will go on, "possibly several months" was what the doctor said. So Lee got 3 prescriptions, a steroid, an antihistamine, and some thing else. Within 2 hours of taking them the hives are gone. All goes well Friday night and saturday. But suddenly Saturday night at about 12am the hives are back yet again. With not many options to help the poor kid I gave him his meds 4 hours early and that seemed to do the trick. We're now taking meds every 12 hours, but the hives start to reappear after about 10 hours, not horrible though. Today (Monday) so far as of 2:30 I haven't heard from the school so I assume he's doing good, I'm sure he has a ton of work that he missed over the last 3 days....but hopefully we have the hives under control......ack......we'll keep you posted!


jan