Illness and Angioedema
Last week, Aaron was quite ill. It started off with a cold and a bit of a cough and then on Sunday afternoon, he started to come out in a rash all over his body. It looked like Chicken Pox, but he had already had that, so we thought it must be something else.
The following morning, the rash had spread all over him so Kelly took him to the doctors and was told it was hives due to an allergic reaction to the cold virus that he was fighting off. He was given some cream and some medicine to take, but the next day it got worse in that his feet started to swell up. So Kelly had to take him to the doctors again and was told this time that he had Angioedema, which is the proper term for an allergic reaction that can cause swelling all over the body, but could also affect breathing due to the swelling. We couldn’t do anymore for him apart from make sure he took his medicine and put the cream on him.
He wasn’t too bad the following day (which happened to be Ben’s 6th birthday), but on the Thursday we got up to find he had swelling around his eyes, which was absolutely awful. He didn’t look like Aaron at all and was very scary. Kelly immediately rang NHS Direct and they told us to take him to the doctors as soon as possible, and that we may even have to take him to hospital. So Kelly made another trip to the doctors and saw a third different doctor (!) and he said he would ring the hospital for a second opinion but he thought Aaron wasn’t bad enough to send him straight in there. We had to wait half the day for a call back, which never happened, so Kelly ended up ringing again to find out what was going on, as we were all ready and prepared to go to the hospital if we needed to. In the end, the stupid doctor didn’t bother ringing us back at all, so Kelly called and he said he had spoken to the hospital and they prescribed a slightly different medicine but not to take him in unless he got any worse! What a day!
Luckily the next day, it seemed like the new medicine had started to work its magic and he looked a bit better, and his rash had gone down slightly. He was still a bit puffy in places and bruised on his feet from the swelling from earlier in the week, but much better thank God. He was also well enough to go to Ben’s birthday party as well though he was very tired by the end.
By Sunday he was almost as good as new, but what a horrible week we had but we are just glad it didn’t get any worse!
Here are a couple of pictures of him when his face was swollen (excuse the dirty nose!)