Thursday, December 19, 2013

Sometimes you just need a diagnosis! - Part 1



Once in awhile, I can't figure out what is wrong with one of my sons. 

It's been one of those weeks.

My youngest normally looks like this...

Beautiful skin, clear complexion (thank to my Patchouli Soap!). Rarely a blemish.

Last Saturday afternoon he asked me what was on his chin.  It looked like a very small patch of blisters...about the size of a pencil eraser.  I told him it looked like poison ivy.  He said it didn't feel like poison ivy.  I didn't think much of it.  Poison ivy and Elijah spend almost every day of the year together and Elijah knows the protocol of how to treat it when it pops up.

However, by Saturday night it had spread and didn't look anything like poison ivy...by Sunday morning it covered his chin, was moving up his cheeks, down his throat and across one collar bone.  He wasn't sleeping well.  I prayed. I gave him an anti-histamine to counter the inflammation and swelling. I didn't know what it was, couldn't find a clue in any of my books, checked with a friend who was a registered nurse and still had no answers.

We tried my Healing Salve and Lavender Salve with little results.  Colloidal silver gave him some relief which led me to believe it might be bacterial but I just didn't know.  It sounded like weeping eczema but he's never had any form of eczema before.  It sounded  like some of the symptoms of a staph infection.   After 31 years as a parent and herbalist, I was stumped. I prayed and I asked friends to pray.

I decided to take him to his doctor Monday morning....but that office was closed for the week. So I took him to a friend who is a doctor - one of the smartest doctors I know.

Here is what he looked like by the time I got him there...

The crease in his chin was weeping a yellow fluid non-stop.  Literally non-stop...drip..drip..drip. The child had to carry a mop rag with him!  It was red, blotchy, inflamed, crusty in places....itched very slightly and burned.  He looked like a burn victim.  He turned heads at the pharmacy and not for the reason he normally turns heads.  Believe it or not, it looked much worse than this picture!

Although we may never know what it was, the doctor settled on some form of contact dermatitis.  No to shingles, no to MRSA, no to staph.  He was given some anti-histamines, and was prescribed a steroid cream and Prednisone (which we wanted to avoid if at all possible).

Now that I knew what I wasn't dealing with, I had a better handle on what to do. It was time to pull out the big guns in our herbal arsenal!

Next post will detail how we treated this with pictures of his progress....
  


2 comments:

  1. I don't know if this adds questions or answers but... I live in TN as well and developed a strange rash about this time as well. Mine came about on the 12th, it looks like his developed on the 14th. I have never had eczema or any kind of "Contact Dermatitis" before in my life, and I grew up in the woods. I had been pulling vines out of pear trees so they suspected it was CT. But I'm not convinced.

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  2. Isn't that something! Wonder if other people had this happen in TN? He's never had anything like this either.

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