Just Another Frump Family Drama

Boy, oh, boy...what a weekend we've had around here.

Sorry to bore y'all with the details, but I had to write this one down for posterity.

The fun began Thursday evening when Jericho came down with what appeared to be the beginnings of the flu.

Friday was his 12th birthday.

Instead of breakast in bed and the royal treatment all day long, he moaned and groaned from the confines of his sickbed, absolutely miserable.

Not even the Nerf 425 repeating rifle, the very latest in Nerf technology, and two bags of additional suction cup darts were any consolation, so great was his misery.

It's no fun to be sick on your birthday.

Lucky for him, we'd planned his big birthday party for Saturday.

By Saturday morning, he'd chirked up considerably, and was sitting up playing video games like nobody's business.

Because of the bummer the day before, we humored him, waiting on him hand and foot.

But an alert chime on my cell-phone informed us that we had a dance recital to attend for one of our youth group girls that evening at Seven. Only an hour after Jericho's birthday party was to begin.

Yipes! But we weren't about to cancel either event.

The girl who was having the dance recital had been talking about it for months, had asked us weeks in advance to attend, and had been working very hard to prepare for it. Her dad was out of town on business rather unexpectedly, too, and so we felt we couldn't not show up.

But neither could we cancel the party, as we'd prepared enough food for an army and it was a double birthday party for Jericho and one of his cousin's children, the entire family of which had flown to town for a visit. We had over 30 people coming.

So after a flurry of calls, we bumped up the time of the party to Four o'Clock. Which barely gave us time to finish pulling the house into respectable shape and getting tables and chairs set up.

By the time the party began, Jericho was feeling well enough to get up and enjoy the meal with everyone.

Afterwards, the parents of all the young children decided to walk to our nearby park to burn off some steam, as all the little kids were getting kind of squirrelly and though the A.C. was on full-blast, it was kind of warm in the house.

Jericho was in the backyard then playing with his Nerf gun, and didn't see everyone leave, so when he came inside, he asked if he could go catch up to them.

Not even thinking about him overdoing it so soon after being sick, I told him to go ahead.

He ran all the way down to the park, where he ran and jumped and played around in the heat of the day with a bunch of cousins.

And I didn't give it a thought.

When he got back, he didn't feel so hot.

In fact, he felt so icky that when it came time to light candles, we had to proceed without him.

At his own birthday party.

He didn't even get to open his presents with everyone there.

And later, when he finally felt up to doing so, was really bummed because this was the first year he'd never asked for a toy. Everyone had given him money towards one big gift.

Which meant there was nothing to play with except the repeating Nerf rifle that makes so much noise as to not be allowed as an indoor toy.

Bummer.

Because he wasn't feeling well, we had to ask Grandma to stay and watch the boys while we went to the recital.

We'd thought 2 1/2 hours would be plenty of time for the party, but our guests didn't leave.

In fact, they stayed and partied without us. It was all very odd, really, us leaving our own party midway through.

The recital included some numbers done to the soundtrack from the movie Enchanted and also High School Musical, and our young friend did a terrific job...very graceful in her ballet numbers, and very cool in her hip-hop ones.

We got home late that evening, and Judah was still up with grandma, looking a little peaked.

Initially, it appeared he'd crashed after a major sugar high, having eaten no less than three slices of cake while we were gone. And a bite of German Chocolate Brownies.

He slept fine through the night, but Sunday morning woke up sick.

I stayed home with the boys.

Jericho was by this time 100% better, but Judah was now miserable.

While Jeff was at church, I noticed that Judah's face had gotten kind of puffy, swollen and red.

Then pox started appearing all over his face.

And the itching. Oh, the poor kid. I tried to coach him to scratch with his knuckles to avoid scarring, but sometimes he would forget.

More appeared on his face, his tummy, his back, his underarms, behind his knees...all the usual places that chicken pox appear.

Then I thought of all those kids who had attended the party, and our immuno-compromised brother-in-law who is on dialysis...all of which would need to be informed, especially since the one family with three children would be returning home on the plane in a couple of days. Ugh.

When I first noticed Judah's condition, Jeff was about 20 minutes or so from getting home, and I watched as the pox continued to worsen.

I finally called Jeff, "We've got to get this kid to the doctor pronto. I think he's got chicken pox. A way worse case than Jericho ever had."

Five minutes later he got home, and we left immediately.

As we're waiting in the E.R., it appeared that there were pox on top of pox, especially on his cheeks which had puffed up as though he had cherries inside of each one. And his ears were covered in them. He was itching his lips with his teeth and I was worried that he might get them in his mouth.

I began to feel a little panicky, especially when the nurse who checked us into the examination room looked at him askance.

It was then that I remembered some pictures on another emergency room door a couple of summers ago, and a new thought occurred to me. Could it be? That dread disease of yesteryear? Smallpox?!!

I felt a little faint, dread coiling in my stomach, thinking about the wretched scarring that leaves behind. How he would be scarred for life, perhaps even made fun of for his terrible looking skin.

I'd worked myself into a sufficient dither just about the time the doctor walked into the room.

The ER doctor (the same one who saw us a few weeks ago for scarlet fever) took one look at him and said, "You poor kid. What did you eat?"

"Eat?" I asked. "I think he's got chicken pox..." or worse.

Though I didn't voice my concern about smallpox, I thought sadly about how he was going to have to live with the results of his illness for years to come.

"Oh, no. That's not chicken pox. That's what we refer to as Uticaria wheels."

Except that with her accent, it came out sounding like "Uticardia". Cardia? Heart?

Was something wrong with his heart?!!

"It's an indicator of a severe allergic reaction." She checked him all over. "Yep, here and here, too. See how the bumps are all different sizes and his face is so red and swollen? That's a severe allergic reaction, most likely to something he ate, though if he came in contact with something through his skin or even something he breathed in, that can cause it too."

This was not what I needed to hear.

My mind suddenly went back to the fear I felt a few weeks ago when I thought Jericho was suffering anaphylaxis but it was really scarlet fever, and my knees got all weak.

Especially when she added, "Under extreme cases the symptoms could last for up to six weeks. You'll want to try and identify what it was that caused his reaction. Sometimes these reactions can be delayed by a day or two."

Suddenly every food, every substance in our home was suspect. The enemy.

Then she prescribed freaky sounding things like steroids and creams and antihistamines (which of course came with all of the paperwork they include with prescriptions that tell of the worst-case scenario side effects), and by the time I got home, I suddenly felt very weary.

But I couldn't crash just yet. I still had to get through the very important V.B.S. leader's meeting at church later that evening. For the Vacation Bible School that begins in a week's time. The one I'm in charge of getting off the ground. Oy.

Here is our poor pitiful patient after he'd been given the antihistamine.



The swelling was mostly gone, and by the end of the evening, there were just a couple of red splotches on his face.

When I did get home, the first thing I did, of course, was to go online and look up allergic reactions.

I'm a glutton for punishment that way. I wasn't sufficiently freaked out enough at the E.R., and had to go look at all the other things that could have happened to him.

And there were a plethora of them, my friends. Frightening photographs of reactions that would have caused me to pass out cold if they happened to my child.

But I did learn something very important. Those very scary sounding "Uticaria wheels"?

Just a fancy Med School way of saying, "Hives".

Why couldn't she just have said hives? For pity's sake, I have so little experience with such things how was I to know they manifested in so many different shapes and patterns! Webs, patches, pox-like bumps, bright red spots, completely covered torsos and bodies, and eyes swollen shut. I feel a little bit faint even thinking about such things.

As for what caused the reaction, after going over every possible thing he'd eaten in the past couple of days and ruling out those things that he'd never had any trouble with before, we're pretty sure that we've narrowed it down to the coconut in those brownies.

Off brand, sale-priced coconut flakes that had been preserved with scary sounding things in the sulfite family.

Bad coconut. I will never, ever, ever make anything with you again!