Second Opinion

Let me introduce to you my son, Ethan. He's a normal kid. He's 18 months old. He runs, plays, yells and spits on everything. He does everything your average little boy would do. Here he is wearing his moms shoes (something all kids do, so I'm told, so I'm not worried...yet!) He has just recently started going to nursery. A blessing to Cristina as she is the one that generally takes care of him during church.

After having a son that for his 18 month tenure on this earth hasn't had much more than a runny nose, you get use to him being healthy all the time. Now I know all you parents out there are saying to yourself that I am just setting myself up for disappointment when he gets a virus or is hit hard with a bad cold. Well, you are right. About a week and a half ago Ethan started getting a small rash on his body. Nothing to worry about right? Maybe an allergic reaction to bananas or something. What a closed minded assumption. Conveniently Ethan's 18 month doctors appointment was the next day. The doctor told Cristina that this was nothing to worry about, that it is just a virus and that it would work its way through his system. He even stated that he wouldn't be surprised if he saw 5 or 6 more kids that week with the same thing. Everything else checked out fine with Ethan, so Cristina left feeling reassured that everything would be fine and this would be over in a few days. By that evening a lot of the spots had faded and he was getting back to normal. He went to bed that night just like any other night. A little fussy, but who wouldn't be. Nothing could prepare us for what was to come the next morning. Apparently through out the night this virus decided to step it up a bit.

I had left for work a little after 7 as per usual. As I was leaving I told Cristina to call me when Ethan woke up to let me know how he was doing. I was about 2 minutes away from work when my phone started ringing. Usually the only person that calls me at that time is my boss. However I heard "Open Arms" playing so I knew it was my loving wife. She explained that Ethan had gotten much worse through the night and he was awake. She explained that he was a little freaked out because his eyes were swollen shut. She wasn't even able to pry his eyes open. It was bad!

Upon this new discovery, Cristina called Ethan's doctor. Unfortunately his doctor wasn't in, but the doctor that was, had an opening first thing that morning and was able to get him in. I'm thinking great, now we will have a second opinion as to what this might be. This second opinion didn't help us much. The doctor told us exactly what Ethan's regular doctor had told us the day before. "Textbook hives" was the diagnosis and not an allergic reaction, just a virus along with the diarrhea he had a couple of days before the hives. Sure, now we had two opinions, which are exactly the same by the way, however that doesn't comfort you much when you have a kid that looks like he is related to "Sloth" from the movie "Goonies".

Of course we had to share these photos with our family, you know, to give them a bit of scare. Along with the warning of "Don't freak out", which everone did anyway. One of my brothers was explaining these hives to his 6 year old son. During the explanation, my nephew asked my brother "why did the bees put hives on Ethan? That's not very nice." Hearing this made the situation seem a little less scary, since obviously my son didn't have beehives on his body.

Needless to say, Ethan is doing much better now after dealing with hives for a week. (they just don't go away as fast as you want them to).