Itch Itch, Scratch Scratch

Last Friday, the kids and I met up with family friends at a nearby park, for a picnic and for play time.  While Lizzie stayed mostly with me, my boys and their friends spent quite a bit of time in the trails and forested area surrounding the playground, building forts and hideaways and entrapment systems designed to keep other people out!  They had a blast.

After my friend left with her boys, the kids and I lingered for another ninety minutes, snacking on watermelon and tortilla chips with dip, and kicking around a soccer ball.

Two things of note transpired:

1.  My kids engaged in ninety minutes of play together - together - without fighting and, in fact, had a truckload of fun.  :)

This is not a normal occurrence for us, though their times of cooperative play have been lengthening a bit over the past several months.  They kicked the ball, tackled each other in good humour, crashed through undergrowth together, and generally had a great time inventing games and races.

2.  The boys contracted some kind of poison ivy-like rash.  :(

While still at the park, Matthew was quite itchy around the back of his neck and upper shoulders.  I couldn't spot anything unusual, so I just rubbed some creamy body butter into his skin to alleviate any dryness that might be causing the itch.  Twenty-four hours later, the itch manifested as a nasty looking rash in that same area.  Twenty-four hours after that, early Sunday evening, his forehead, cheeks, and torso also sported a maze of rash designs.

Monday morning, I took one look at Seth and gasped:  His left eye was swollen almost shut and much of his whole face was covered with a bumpy, welty rash - his face was totally distorted.  I wish I'd had my camera handy.  He said that his face felt a little funny and that there seemed to be a ball on his cheek just under his eye.  Uh, yeah, no kidding!  We were at the walk-in doctor's office by 8:30am and both boys were diagnosed with some form of contact dermatitis...not quite poison ivy but something similar...who knows what.

By Tuesday morning, both of Seth's eyes were swollen, his face was a mass of tiny bumps, and other (more sensitive) parts of his body were now affected and swollen; Matthew's wasn't quite so extreme, but definitely worse as well.  I called our family doctor and asked for a last minute appointment and we raced across the city to make our appointment on time.  Mostly I was concerned about his eyes.  Sadly, the doc had, really, no idea what it is - likely contact dermatitis, as the walk-in doc had suggested but something she was also unfamiliar with.  She gave us a prescription for a stronger ointment for non-facial areas of the boys' bodies and assured us that it wasn't contagious.

This is a first in our family...so far we've managed to avoid these kinds of things.  So the boys have been sucking back the Benadryl while I coat their skin with calamine lotion and a cortate cream and some prescription ointment.  The last two days have been a little quieter than usual, with the Benadryl making the boys kinda dopey...it's been interesting to see a side of Seth where he actually manifests a wee bit of tiredness!  We did go to the library, where one of the staff people (who's known us for a couple of years) took one look at Seth's bumpy and lopsided face and asked what on earth was wrong with him.  (Note:  if something serious had been amiss, that may have felt like a rather inappropriate question!)

Anyway, I'm sure they'll recover both normal looking skin and good humour soon.  And things do seem better this morning.  Thank goodness...'cause yesterday afternoon I almost made a tape recording of myself saying "don't scratch your rash" so that every fifteen seconds when one of the boys asked about scratching, I could just press 'play.'