Dexter's Scary Rash

I'll go ahead and call it a "first," although I certainly hope we never see any more scary rashes. Ever.

As we said before, Dexter visited the doctor on Monday, 10/5 for his one year well-child visit. While there, he received the MMR and polio vaccines. He was also prescribed amoxicillin for a possible sinus infection.

On Friday, 10/9, we tried to get him a flu shot. But he was running a fever (101ish), so they couldn't give it to him. The fever wasn't terrible but didn't respond well to the standard tylenol/motrin combo.

When he still had a fever on 10/10, we called the pediatrician (as instructed). They wanted to see him. He looked fine, but they figured if he had fever, then the amoxicillin wasn't working and prescribed him some keflex. We asked if he could be one of the 16% of children who gets a fever from the MMR vaccine, but the pediatrician seemed confident that was not the case.

On Sunday, we started giving him the keflex. He slept a lot on Sunday (Saturday, too), but we figured he was just feeling badly and needed extra rest. Besides, he usually sleeps a lot on the weekends to catch up from his busy weeks at daycare.

Monday morning, we woke him up and got him dressed. When we brought him into some brighter light, we noticed a faint rash spreading across his nose, scalp, neck, and torso:


So we kept him home that day. Again, he slept a lot. I called the pediatrician to ask if Dexter was one of the 5% of children who gets a rash in response to the MMR vaccine. They asked a few questions over the phone and decided that yes, that's probably what it was, but to call if it got worse.

Well, by that night, it was worse:


But it still didn't seem like a severe rash along the lines of what you find online when you search for "measles" or "MMR rash reaction" or anything. And Dexter didn't seem too bothered by it. (a little grumpy, but he wasn't scratching at it or anything. And he was still happy to play "upside-down baby" with Dennis.) So we weren't too worried.

Tuesday morning (10/13), I brought him to daycare as usual. As the day progressed, I decided I would email the above photos to the pediatrician, just to make sure this was indeed a "mild" rash. Except we hadn't submitted the correct form to correspond with them via email. So that afternoon, after I picked him up from daycare, we made a quick stop at the doctor's office to drop off the form.

When the receptionist saw Dexter, she gasped and called a nurse over. When the nurse came over, she gasped and said she'd never seen an MMR rash that bad. They took his temp (normal) but squeezed us in for an appointment right then because things were surprisingly slow that afternoon. The doctor walked in and instantly said "That is not an MMR reaction." Instead, he diagnosed an allergy to keflex (an antibiotic he's been on before with no issues), prescribed a steroid to help the hives go away, and took him off of all of the antibiotics altogether (since the sinus infection was only "suspected" and none of the antibiotics were particularly effective anyway).

We got a few more pictures that night. Things had definitely gotten much worse:


Poor kid was still not really scratching at the rash, but he had to be miserable.

We were just SO lucky that we happened to go in to the pediatrician's office and that they were able to see us. Otherwise, we would have continued giving him the keflex and made things so much worse.

The steroid worked well overnight. On Wednesday morning, his rash was MUCH better (back to Monday-ish looking), and it kept getting better after that.

Unfortunately, Dexter's general demeanor continued to sour, and he was just not himself for a couple of more days. He was clingy, cuddly, crying, screaming, and he slept A LOT. We weren't sure if it was a reaction to the vaccines (still a possibility, as we're in that time window), a delayed reaction to a change in his diet (transitioning from formula to milk), continued effects of the allergic reaction, or a number of other things. All we knew is that something wasn't right.

And I guess that's all we'll ever know, and that's OK. He finally seems to be getting back to his old self tonight (10/16). Boy did we miss our HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY boy! I'm looking forward to seeing him make a full recovery by the end of the weekend and be ready for tons of playtime on Sunday and throughout next week at daycare.