Coby has been doing soooo well and his 3.5 dose- no issues at all!
And then today happened.
He ate his 3 and a half peanuts. He drank his water.
As he was drinking he swallowed wrong and started coughing and spewed out bits of peanuts. At first I thought he spewed out what he was still chewing but Coby claimed that he had already swallowed all the peanuts but when the water went down wrong he choked and he felt them coming back up.
Little shards of peanut spewed on the floor and on my hand.
At first I felt extremely frustrated... crap! How much did he end up dosing with? Do I try figuring out how to replace that amount? If he ended up dosing with less today and he has full dose tomorrow, will he react?
So I took a picture of the 'spewage' in case the doctor wanted to see how much spewed, and we called the doctor for the first time of the evening. (I also took a picture of the pieces in my hand but that picture was a lot grosser than the one below since it still had saliva on it, so I'm not posting that one here.)
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| Pieces of peanut on the floor |
We asked the doctor, "Do we replace the peanut that he spewed? But I don't know how much he spewed, I don't want to over-dose him so what do we do?"
She said, "As long as the total is less than one peanut, don't replace it. It's fine."
Okay.... so I thought we put the issue to bed and we'd have a very simple two hours of observation since he now had even less peanut in him....
....Coby then said his throat hurt a little bit.
Oooookay....
...but that could be normal--- after all your throat hurts after you vomit a bit....
BUT then I realized he sounded very congested...
I needed some validation to know I wasn't beginning to fill with paranoia.
Mikey was home and so I called him to me to listen to Coby talk. Mikey also heard the congestion and verified that Coby did sound 100% fine prior to dosing.
Okay--- so it was real. And I wasn't imagining things.
For 15 minutes I kept making Coby talk hoping it would clear up, but it didn't. I took a few videos of him talking in case Coby would refuse to get on the phone and the doctor wanted to hear what he sounded like.
I still didn't call the doctor but once I noticed a small mark on his nose and one on his chest and one by his ear I knew I had to call the doctor again. (At this point I also cancelled my PT appointment that was scheduled for this evening because there was no way Coby was going to leave my sight for the rest of the night.)
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| Small mark on his nose |
I called the office and the receptionist put a doctor on the phone right away. She told me, "you need to begin treatment of the reaction," and told me to give him 2 teaspoons of benadryl.
I hemmed and hawed. Benadryl scares me.... and what if it's not enough...
"I'm nervous because he sounds congested, what if..."
"You know what, give him a teaspoon of the steroid too. If anything continues to progress call us back, otherwise we will call you in a half hour."
I really thought she was going to tell me to epi him--- after all his throat hurt, a couple of small marks appeared (though they were not yet hives) and he sounded congested, but I gave him the meds (much to his dismay since he hates the tastes), and we waited.
Coby told me his throat was starting to feel better, but he still sounded very congested.
Jessi called me back and told me to give him another teaspoon of steroid.
"O-o-kay."
"You sound very hesitant, what's going on?"
"I'm just nervous. The last two times the hives happened hours later, he never had this congestion happen before."
"I really don't think you're at the point of needing to epi him--- if it gets there we'll be there."
"Okay- but then why is this happening? It was going so well."
I started listing off possibilities to her:
*His school had him playing outside for an entire hour in this heat. I know heat can bring on a reaction- but that was 4 hours prior to dosing- could that be it?
Probably not.
*He had a shower a half hour before dosing- but most of it was a cool shower but the first couple of minutes was hot, could that have done it? Though we've been doing a shower a half hour before dosing all along to wash off the pollen from his fuzzy hair. (We knew not to shower him within 2 hours after dosing)
Probably not- but space it by 45 minutes now just in case.
*This time when dosing, I specifically picked out the 3 and a half LARGEST I had and gave him all the big ones, could that have done it?
At this point, big or small shouldn't matter anymore.
Jessi said if things worsen to call her back otherwise she will call again in another half hour.
After that half hour went by, Coby said his throat was feeling mostly better, but he still sounded congested. She had me do a skin check but nothing new had appeared.
She told me that it really is possible that he choked on the water and when he regurgitated and had the acid come back up that could have caused the throat hurting and the congestion. She also said since the peanuts went down and then came back up that could have caused this type of reaction because his throat had to deal with twice--- both going down and going back up.
She told me it would be such a shame to have to down-dose at this point, since he had been doing great at this level until now and she doesn't want us to lose our momentum. She said she will speak to Dr. Selter to see if we can try 3.5 peanuts again tomorrow.
She will call us tomorrow to let us know how to dose him and to see if we can still up-dose this Thursday. She asked me if I'm comfortable with possibly trying 3.5 again tomorrow and I told her that I was---
---"but I am NOT going to be picking the 3.5 largest peanuts in the bag tomorrow." She said, "But don't pick the smallest ones either!!!!"
She wished me a "better night than how it started off, but if anything new develops like stomach pain or anything do not hesitate to call us. You did the right thing."
Here's hoping...
The kid is definitely going to sleep in my bed tonight.... Right now he is lying on the couch struggling to stay awake since he has so much 'sleepy meds' in him.
And that still leaves me confused as to what could have caused this today...
Was it the heat?
Is he getting sick and his body is fighting off something else and so his 'allergy bucket' had tipped?
Was his shower too close to dosing?"
Was it me picking out the largest peanuts of the batch I had cracked?
Did a simple choking of the water really domino into all of this?
I'm sooooo confused.
At times this is just too much, you know? I haven't yet fully recovered from his most recent reaction just a couple of weeks back, and now here we go again????
But weare keeping our eyes on the goal and so we will get back up, wipe off our scraped knees and try try again.
...but why does he still sound so congested?????
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