I had a horrific experience with my middle child a couple of weeks ago, one that still gives me nightmares when I replay what happened. I have been doing the baby thing for 13+ years and never have I experienced such an attack of fear which brought about complete paralysis.
Our Monday night routine was as normal and as routine as it could get. Having eaten our dinner, we made our way up to bed to relax and wind down before each one headed off to their rooms to sleep. After tucking the children into bed my husband and I began the Netflix scroll palava, which as usual, took around half an hour, until we eventually resorted to starting a new series. With dimmed lights and still on the first episode, which was maybe an hour after the kids had gone to bed, my daughter rushes into our room crying with pain in her bottom lip. Switching on the lights, I turned into a lump of jelly. Her lip was the size of an oval balloon, she was in excessive pain and it looked excruciatingly sore. My immediate reaction was for her not to look at herself in the mirror, as I knew she would be petrified (little did I know she had already done so). I switched off the lights, told my husband I suspected an allergic reaction and that we had to act fast because my greatest fear was that it was anaphylaxis. On the way to A and E we spoke to our Paediatrician and decided to go to him. Before we had even left the house, the swelling had increased I had never seen anything like it.
Thank goodness it was only an allergic reaction. She was given a cortisone injection and antihistamine medicine to take during the night. Back home it got worse, the swelling had spread to her top lip, which completely distorted her face. She couldn’t even drink water from a straw. Luckily, there was no swelling of her throat and no danger to her respiratory system. It took many phone calls back and forth with our doctor and a long agonizing wait for us to see the swelling go down , but eventually we did and Nayia was able to get some sleep.
Playing back the sequence of events and the food she ate I came to the assumption that it was probably a herb variety that was on the ready-made cordon bleu piece of chicken. But we will see. Allergies are difficult to trace.
A lesson to be learnt:
My mistake was not having any of the right meds in the house. Decadron and Zyrtec must always be in your first aid kit. Maybe I could have avoided leaving the house at 11 that night if I had the right stuff to give Nayia at home. Whatever the case allergies are serious and I had no idea how much until this night.
Reading the link: healthline.com helped soothe me whilst waiting for the swelling to go down.
Maria x
