The Journey of Parenthood…

Random Bite

I was pumped to put the new-to-me jogging stroller to use Monday morning so Kye and I headed out early for a nice long walk (the jogging stroller is AWESOME btw…such a smoother ride compared to our normal stroller). We went to the playground, as usual, and Kye had a blast running around. While he was climbing up to go to the slide I noticed his foot looked red. I didn’t think much of it but I put him on the swings and slipped off his shoe (ever since we had a play date with Stevie and Neela he’s been in love with Crocs so I got him a cheap pair at a recent kids sale and he LOVES them…this cannot be my child). His ankle was very swollen and red and it was obvious something had bit him. Since I never heard him cry or act like he was in pain I figured it was probably no big deal. However, the more I thought about it I realized that the lady who owned the jogging stroller before me had said it’d been sitting in her garage for awhile un-used. I also realized that on our walk I noticed some spiderwebs on the breaks of the stroller and made a mental note to clean them off at some point. Those two realizations made me nervous because I don’t know crap about spiders and can’t you just be fine one minute then drop dead the next from them?

it’s hard to get a picture of a toddler’s foot but you can see how red it was and swollen

I called Crissy as she is very calm and collected like I am in situations like these. Neither of us freak out and it’s nice to have a friend like that because if knew if I called Zach’s mom she’d say take him to the emergency room haha! Crissy said she wasn’t sure what she’d do b/c she didn’t see the bite herself. As I was talking to her three moms came up to the playground so I got their opinions. One said she’d for sure take him in, another said she’d just give benadryl and wait it out until the afternoon, and the third said she wouldn’t worry about it. Since I don’t have any benadryl and wouldn’t know how much to give him of it anyway I figured I should call the dr. We headed back to the house and on the way I called the dr office and by some chance miracle they answered after only waiting like a minute (usually it’s like 20). As soon as I told her that my son had been bit by something and I didn’t know what she said I needed to go in. So we did.

it was completely swollen around the knob of his ankle so you couldn’t even see it anymore

I rushed back to the house, drenched in sweat, and quickly got things together because it was 10:45 and the walkin clinic closes for lunch at 11:15. I was beyond embarrassed leaving the house in a ponytail, sweaty, with no makeup but I did take the time to change into sweat-free clothes so it was the best I could do. Kye behaved awesome at the dr. I think I should stop being surprised when he behaves and just expect it because he rarely misbehaves! He was acting 100% fine and I felt rather silly having him up there because he was dancing around the waiting room playing with other children and then when they put us in a room he ate all his lunch (Lunchables are AWESOME when you have to leave quick!) and enjoyed playing on the ac vent thing.

does this look like a kid that belonged at the dr?!?!

yes he had shoes but I didn’t want them to rub the bite area

They did weigh him while we were there and he’s weighing in at 26.4 lb which means he’s gained almost a pound since his 15 month check up! Anyway, Dr. John came in and he remembered us which is always nice. He checked out Kye’s foot and immediately said it was good I brought him in. He said many things about the bite made him nervous: it was in a scary location, felt “funny” and was hot to the touch. I guess bug bites can get into your joints or something and affect mobility? He said it was a very good sign that Kye was walking still and that it didn’t hurt him when the area was touched but that we wanted to prevent it from spreading into those joints. He said he didn’t know what bit him but that a spider bite would actually be three little bites so he doubted it was that. He said it was important for us not to pop the bite or mess with it but that we needed to get him on three medications for the next 7-10 days and soak his foot 3x a day in an epsom salt bath for 15 min each time (and that one of the soakings could be his normal night-time bath and just to mix 1 full cup of the salt with his bath water).

Dr. John drew a circle around the bite in sharpie and said that if the reddness or swelling went beyond that line to bring him back in asap and that if the actual bite location turned black to also bring him in. Other than that he just said to monitor it and that he expected it to heal rather quickly and get smaller and smaller over the next couple of days. I went to Walgreens and picked up all the meds and epsom salt and had Kye wait until after the first soaking to take his nap. Thankfully my kid is tv deprived b/c all I had to do was turn that junk on some random Disney channel show and he was zoned out for the full 15 min!

sharpie circle

soaking the bite

The meds Kye is on are: Keflex (1 tsp 2x per day for 10 days), Zantac (1/4 tsp 2x per day for 7 days), and Zyrtec (1 tsp 1x per day for 7 days). I don’t know anything about any of them. I’m the type of person who just trusts the experts and I LOVE Dr. John and I appreciate the fact that he’s very cautious with things. I’d much rather give Kye medicine and it be nothing then ignore it and it be deadly or something ya know?

Tuesday morning we woke up and it looked SO much better. Probably half the swelling is down and most of the red has faded. I’m still doing all the medicines as I know it’s important to finish them out but I don’t think the epsom salt soak is really that critical so I’m just going to do the nightly soak in his bath. I don’t want Kye to get too used to watching TV 🙂 

I hate situations like this because we’ll probably never know what bit him (just like we’ll never know what caused his rash that time). I was talking to Robyn about it and she made such a good point…my child has never had an ear infection and rarely gets sick but he has the most RANDOM stuff happen to him! First that crazy mystery rash and now this random bite. It keeps life interesting I guess 🙂 My mom did tell me that she’s very allergic to fire ants and that she’ll swell up so maybe he just inherited that from his Gramma…who knows!

Emily Parker
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