The Story of the Rash

I had posted sometime last month about J's illnesses that he had seen the doctor about that day, but still managed to pass his Bus Drivers Physical. Well the rash hasn't gotten any better, in fact it's gotten worse. On Monday he called our doctor back and they made him an appointment with a dermatologist and called in another prescription. The dermatologist appt wasn't until January, so we had to try a different one in the larger town to our East. They couldn't get him in until November. At this rate J was going to have scratched down to the muscle or his arm was going to rot off. I picked up the $40 prescription Monday night and took it home to him. Since he had a ballgame he didn't get home until about 10:00 so he did what is becoming his normal routine and soaked in an oatmeal bath and then used the new cream. I had problems of my own Monday evening - I felt like I was getting strep throat, so I didn't much care about his itching. At 12:30 Tue morning he got me up because he feels like he's on fire. He wanted me to see if his rash has gotten worse. I was a little cranky because my throat hurt so bad and he woke me up. I didn't think it looked any worse so I told him so. He went and took a Tylenol PM and then laid back down. He tossed and turned and sighed for quite awhile. I was quickly losing patience so I told him to take another bath. At almost 1:00 a.m. J drew himself another oatmeal bath. While he soaked I laid there trying to decide what I was going to do about my throat - gargling warm salt water didn't help, chloraseptic spray didn't help. I wanted to take Tylenol PM, but decided that both of us didn't need to be knocked out. I finally decided on Alleve and threw in a decongestant for the heck of it. Jay got back into to bed and both of us were wide awake so we watched some of one of the Rocky movies (the one where Rocky fights the Russian). We were both so miserable that J said we were going to need an ambulance escort to the adoption training this weekend. I tried to laugh, but my throat hurt too bad.

Yesterday morning C wakes up and says he's itching like daddy. I went to look at it, thinking it was going to be a mosquito bite, but it wasn't. He had a weird looking rash all over his ankle. I called our doctor first thing yesterday morning and begged the nurse to get us in, which she was able to do. She is much nicer than the ladies at the front desk. The doctor looked at both of them and he didn't have a clue what we should do, except that J didn't need to use the $40 cream anymore. Dr S called the dermatologist himself and got both of them an appt yesterday afternoon. The Dermatologist said J has Contact Dermatitis, so he is allergic to something he came into contact with. The question is will the higher dose of steroids get rid of it, or is it something that he's coming into contact with on a daily basis? If it's not better in a couple of weeks J will have to have some allergy testing. They said it could be anything from gas fumes to elastic on his waistband. He wasn't so sure about C's rash, he told us just to use the cream he was giving J on it to see if it would help. So after $30 there and another $30 on prescriptions we managed to spend $100 in about 24 hours on a rash. That's our luck.

We were quite a site yesterday, I could hardly talk, Jay was scratching his arms non-stop and C kept having to stop walking so he could scratch his ankle. It makes you think twice about touching the door handles at stores doesn't it. You never know who's been scratching something before they touched that door...and I was worried about lice!