Then a couple of days later he developed hives. They were HUGE. We called the doctor. We started benadryl. We eliminated all kinds of things from our diet and he just continued to have nasty, large, itchy hives, especially right after dinner. He started looking swollen all the time.
After a couple of weeks of nothing helping we were able to see the allergist. In ten minutes she knew exactly what it was. Mister W had dermographism. It literally means, writing on the skin. Basically his immune system freaked out. It's pretty rare and so it's no surprise that the pediatrician wasn't sure what it was. They aren't sure what causes it except that it seems to happen when a person has had a fever and then takes a course of amoxicillin. It isn't an allergy to the drug, but rather just a hyper-immune response when the system gets overloaded. Any place where his skin was touched he would develop a hive. We could actually write on his skin and it would appear in the shape of whatever we put on his skin. Most of the time this doesn't bother the person affected. It's simply cosmetic. For mister W he fell into the type that was itchy so he was pretty miserable.
There's no real treatment for dermographism and in some cases it's permanent. It can be controlled somewhat with Zyrtec. Luckily for mister W, his cleared up after a few days. Whew!
How is it we always get the weird illnesses?! :o)
