Angioedema

Itsssssss baaaack... ALLERGIES!! I haven't written about allergies in a while. That's because the incidents have been pretty minor up til now. Liam would get a rash here and there, with uncomfortable itching, but they would go away. I was hoping that Liam would be growing out of it... In some instances, he is less sensitive such as tomatoes. He can eat spaghetti and pizza now, which both have cooked tomatoes. Raw tomatoes, not as much.

But he has had two incidents in the past 6 months that raises a cause for concern. Both incidents occurred at school, and in both incidents, we cannot identify the cause. The first incident, a rash and swelling occurred at school where we were called to pick him up. Luckily with some monitoring and staying at home, the rash went away. The second incident happened recently while he was away at daycamp. He came home with rash and hives on his arms and face. I gave him a bath right away to wash off any possible topical contact. The next morning, he woke up with even more rash and some swelling on the face. Below.

So we went to the doctor, and she gave him Claritin. I knew Claritin wouldn't do much for swelling, but maybe help with the hives. Maybe I should have asked more for the swelling since that was the main concern... and indeed, the next day when he woke up... Liam's face puffed up like a giant puffer fish... so much that he had trouble opening his eyes. Yup.. definitely a cause for concern now. Off to visit the ER, hospital again. I was hoping we would skip our happenstance yearly visits this year, but nope.

Obviously it's an allergic reaction. Luckily Liam's reactions are all external. Angioedema is the swelling of the face. Luckily it is not the swelling of the throat, which is Anaphylaxis. Either way, his symptoms are progressively getting worse with each exposure. We don't know what caused the reaction. Possibly cross-contamination at school. Maybe there is something else he is allergic to that we don't know. It means back to root causing this before it happens again. Below is Liam's face with swelling going down, several hours after receiving benadryll and steroid medication. I'm against taking steroids, but several sources agreed that it was necessary.

It's time to see the allergist again...

Kamikaze Jr.

Kamikaze. One of the definitions as describe by Oxford dictionary --> wreckless or potentially self destructive. That was one of the nicknames I was given back in my younger days when I was determined to surf bigger and better. Now I see some of my personality traits being inherited by my kiddos.

This is the top of the stairs from my point of view.

Maybe it looks different from a kids perspective... top of the stairs from E's point of view.

Nope. They don't look that much different. That landing below still looks like pretty darn far. Note the sweet normal looking child in this photo. She's Kamikaze Jr.

And here's the perspective from a side observer view..

This one afternoon, Emilia asked Ryan to please move out of her way as they were headed down the stairs. And then she proceeded with her spontaneous decision to jump down an ENTIRE flight of stairs. The crazy part, is that she MADE it. Albeit, she landed very hard on her heels and it hurt, and she cried a little, but she MADE IT. No emergency room. No broken bones. She didn't go head first into the wall from forward momentum. She didn't miss the landing which would have made her land on the stairs and then tumble down. Nope. She MADE IT with just a slightly swollen ankle.

Of course I had to lecture her on safety and "What were you thinking??! Does THAT look safe?!.. and we could have ended up in the ER.. AGAIN!".

As Ryan and I stood at the top of the stairs looking down in silence, he then said "I bet you secretly wish you could do that." We dared each other to do the exact same jump... and um.. nope. Not sure if it's old age or that we know better, but that "jump" looks and feels ridiculously far.

Emilia is definitely our little dare devil. You should see her crazily attack the downhill driveway with her tricycle. Her legs flailing out as the bike swerves left and right with a nearly uncontrollable steering. And oh yeh, you'd hear her shrieks of laughter bellowing all the way down the hill.

Bili Update: The Light at the End of the Bili-Tub

These past few days reminds me of the song "Blue" by Eiffel 65 as Liam and I have only seen blue while trapped inside a tiny little sterile room. Everything feels like it appropriately fits with a techno-beat blue song.

"Yo listen up, here is the story about a little guy, that lives in a blue world, and all day and all night, and everything he sees, is just blue... "




Labor and delivery was relatively short and easy compared to the past few days, which have been frustrating and tiresome. Liam has been such a trooper through all the blood draws, needle pricks, forced eye mask, and a blue tub isolation without much cuddle or holding. Mama has not been such a trooper, running on 1 hour intervals of sleep getting maybe 4-5 hours of sleep in 24 hour period, going back and forth with hospital personnels on the care of Liam and fighting traditional mentalities with modern preferences, while trying to "recover" from giving birth.

To recap and correct prior posts, Liam's bili went this way --> 7.1 --> 9.2 --> 15.3 --> 18.3 --> photo-therapy --> 15.3 --> 11.9 (yeh! below 12 means we get to come home!) Objective is to have a low number and/or a low delta gain the following day. So, from 7.1 to 9.2, delta gain is relatively low. But then it jumps from a 9 to a 15. Big delta change for a day's worth. And then from 15 to 18 in just a few hours. Not good. The numbers don't mean much, the concern is that 18.3 is very high and getting close to danger zone and other issues, so it was good that we did get re-admitted to the hospital to deal with this, even though it was very not fun.

We are now home, but not exactly out of the woods. The photo-therapy and increased in Liam's protein intake through formula supplement and me vigorously feeding him every three hours and additionally increasing milk through pumping after his feedings helped to bring the bili number back to a manageable level. Now the docs needs to see that Liam's liver can handle the bilirubins on their own, which we hope, and we will get an idea of that with another doc visit/blood draw tomorrow. So.. out of the woods, but not in the clearing yet.

Here's Ryan and Emilia paying Liam and I a visit:

Return of the Bilirubin, Part 2

This seems to be the way things go for us (we had a similar situation with Emilia). We found out that Liam's bilirubin level was too high again on Saturday so Connie had to take him back to the hospital. This time he went to the pediatric unit at Palomar Hospital. In retrospect, we may have been discharged too early from UCSD Hospital. I had the bilirubin levels wrong in my last post. His initial reading was correct at 7, but his second reading was just slightly higher (need to get the exact number when Connie gets back). It's a little obscure what is a good reading as it's more dependent on the trend. As long as the levels rise slightly or stay the same, things are good. But if they rise too rapidly, then alternative measures need to be taken. At UCSD, they must have thought that it was rising at an acceptable rate. But by Saturday, when we had him checked by our pediatrician, they had elevated to an unacceptable level. So that meant he had to receive phototherapy and supplemental formula until Connie's milk is fully in. He was retested this morning after receiving these treatments, and he is responding well. They expect that, if this trend continues, he should be able to come home tomorrow.