Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Allergy FYI

A couple of weeks ago, when Jaxon came to me after class at church, he told me he was itchy. I figured he was hot in his clothes. We got home, and for about two hours, he said nothing more about it. Then he came to Phill with red cheeks and said, "Dad, my body itches."

Phill helped him undress, and lo and behold--he had hives on his back, his stomach, legs, waist (especially at the back), chest, and face--especially the cheeks. We were perplexed and mildly alarmed. We wondered if his treat in Primary had caused this, but didn't get an answer when we called his teachers.

So then we wondered about other things--had he been in contact with some sort of strong soap? Had a bug bit him? Had we fed him something new? The answers to all three, as far as we knew
--no, no, no.

We decided to give him a half-dose of Benadryl.
Wouldn't you know--the hives went away completely. So we knew that we were dealing with an allergic reaction of some sort....we just had no clue what it was. The hives did return that night. And the next day. And the day after that. They always responded with Benadryl, and they weren't covering a huge portion of his skin.

Anyway, 3 days in, I finally realized that the hives were where his clothes touched him most--on his back towards his armpits. At the waistband of his underwear. On his cheeks, where his shirt would brush his face as I brought it down over his head. On his calves where his jeans touched his skin. I called my grandma (the Allergy Queen) to run our theory by her, and with her confirmation, decided it must be the new laundry detergent we had just purchased. Tide with lavender.

I lamented to my grandma that I'd have to throw out or give away an entire box of detergent, but she told me I could just give the clothes an extra rinse and be fine.
And guess what? She was absolutely right. We've not had another hives incident since.

5 comments:

Heidi said...

We have similar problems, when Bennett was in the PICU they put him in an itty bitty hospital gown and he broke out in a rash all over his torso. The doctors were perplexed (he was in for RSV) and were about to call the infectious disease team back in before I realized it was their laundry soap. I brought in clothes from home and he was fine. That would have been one expensive consult with the medical team to be told it was laundry detergent. :) We use All Free & Clear or Charlie's Soap and then no break outs. Anything with perfumes or dyes seems to set my kids off.

Sarah said...

Glad it was so easy to fix and not a mystery. I was allergic to a specific brand of dryer sheet. Got rid of those and everything was fine. Good job figuring it all out!

Kelly said...

Yah, I've heard of more and more lavender allergies lately--if that's Jax's case. Good job in figuring it out! Ike gets eczema on his legs sometimes, and I haven't figured out how to control it yet. :(

Qait said...

Mom switched to "All" because I had allergic reactions to laundry detergent as a baby. :/
Good call.

Kate said...

He is getting so big and he is so cute. We have had that happen at our house too and had to stop using the detergent and it helped. Glad that worked.