Last Monday Hannah woke up and had a little sleep in her eyes but not really much more than normal. As the course of the morning wore on her eyes began to weep and I realized she had some sort of infection or cold in her eyes. We headed to a local urgent care where they confirmed this and prescribed an antibiotic eye drop that she was to take for one week.
Her eyes cleared up within 24 hours but we continued on with the drops as prescribed.
Fast forward to last night when we were staying at Grandma and Grandpa’s house together. She was her normal fun, happy self and snacked on a few peanuts with Grandpa. She’s had peanut butter for well over a year now and had also eaten Nutella at breakfast yesterday.
When I put her to bed she went right to sleep but was pretty unsettled. I kept going up and settling her and figuring it was a new place so she wanted mommy there. I ended up going to bed earlier than normal and when I did I quickly realized why she was unsettled - she was SO itchy! I lathered her in cream more than once and scoured mom and dad's medicine cabinet but they didn't have anything for kiddos that would help. (I often travel with our meds bag but since it was just one night it hadn’t even crossed my mind to take them with us.) Shortly after midnight she was still super itchy so I turned the light back on. When I unzlpped her pj's I saw that it had got worse and she was now covered in white welts from her tummy to her toes! Poor kid!! I know what that is like and it's awful!!
I hopped out of bed and began to google 24 hour pharmacy's and realized the closest one was in another city. I decided rather than drive there that I’d to head to ER. Partially because it was closer and partially because she'd had the nuts. I wanted to err on the side of caution.
The good part was that the ER was quiet and we were in and out quickly and home within an hour. (The ER in the city we live in is often a 4+ hour wait so this was much better!)
(The mask was not necessary. She just wanted to wear it because it was covered in Disney characters! 
) The doctor was great with Hannah, teasing her and making her giggle even though it was 1am. He took the reaction very seriously (more seriously than I thought it was) and because of the potential that it's linked to the nuts he gave us a prescription for an Epipen Jr. until I can get her tested. They also gave her some Benadryl and it worked quickly which allowed her to finally rest peacefully and sleep.
So, for now we're staying away for everything that might contain peanuts or nuts and I'll be calling our doctor's office tomorrow to set up an appt. He told me to stop her eye drops which I did immediately.
In my heart it's not a nut allergy but given the seriousness of the doctor's conversation last night I'm taking it seriously. I think it might be related to the antibiotic eye drops that she's had this week.
We'll see. I'll keep you posted....
For now, she's as amazing as ever and we're just being careful. I was like a different person today, reading labels and questioning everything I fed her. Praying it’s NOT an allergy to something that is part of her normal life!
**UPDATE - Monday, Jan 9th at 1:15** I spoke with my doctor's office and we now have an appt with them on Fri, Jan 20th.
More stuff to add to post based on the great comments from readers!
1. The nuts that she ate were peanuts but they were from a can of mixed nuts that contained hazelnuts, almonds, filberts, cashews and almonds. Also, it stated it may contain oils from other tree nuts. She'd had Nutella at breakfast that morning too but showed no reaction to that at all at the time. She has eaten nuts and peanut butter since she was about 15 months old.
2. As I've given this more thought I've also remembered that some days last week after giving her the eye drops she would get red patches under/beside her eyes and a couple of times even small white welts under her right eye. At the time I just figured it was where the antibiotic touched her skin when she wiped her eyes after we put the drops in. She was a trooper but did not appreciate those drops at all! :)
) I tell her he’s playing with his friends Frosted Flake and Chippey but still, she talks about him each morning. It’s cute and it shows me how much she enjoyed this fun little tradition that we began this year.
