Day 292: Antihistamines!

Wal­greens — $34.72

Tues­day night The Son played right and left field dur­ing a 8pm base­ball game.  Some­thing out in the grass made a real meal out of The Son — par­tic­u­larly his ankles.  Yes­ter­day they itched; today he was in agony.  Poor kid has bite after inflamed bite on both legs.  And they’re huge bites.  Obvi­ously he’s hav­ing an aller­gic reac­tion to what­ever poi­son those bugs pumped into him.

Every 3 or 4 hours today I’ve nursed his bites with a reg­i­men of ice, rub­bing alco­hol, and then a gen­er­ous dol­lop of StingStop.  But I knew that wouldn’t get him through the night so after din­ner I ran out for some seri­ous sup­plies.  I don’t like giv­ing my kids med­i­cine.  I espe­cially don’t like giv­ing them things that will make them drowsy or will affect their moods.  The Son has only had Benadryl one other time in his life — a few years ago he had a reac­tion to an antibi­otic (some­thing else I rarely give to the kids) and he broke out all over with ter­ri­ble hives.

But des­per­ate times call for des­per­ate mea­sures and if you could see these poor ankles, you’d know these are des­per­ate times.  With the help of the phar­ma­cist I bought three dif­fer­ent remedies:

• Children’s Benadryl — $6.49  (The Son at age 13, 5’10″ tall, and weigh­ing 125 lbs def­i­nitely could be given the adult Benadryl except that he can­not swal­low pills.  This will be admin­is­tered tonight at bed­time and will serve both to make him drowsy and relieve the itching.)
• Clar­itin Red­itabs — $19.99/40 tablets (I can’t give him the Benadryl and the Clar­itin at the same time but the Clar­itin takes longer to take effect and there­fore was less ideal than the Benadryl for get­ting through the night tonight.  I’ll give him his first Clar­itin tablet tomor­row morn­ing and hope­fully it will pro­vide the nec­es­sary relief through the day tomor­row with­out mak­ing him drowsy.)
• Benadryl Gel — $5.79  (This will be applied top­i­cally as needed tonight and tomor­row and beyond.  I prob­a­bly didn’t need to make this pur­chase and could have just stuck with the StingStop but I fig­ured as long as I was break­ing so many self-imposed rules about med­icat­ing my chil­dren, I might as well break them all.)

On the advice of the phar­ma­sist, I did not get the tube of Cor­ti­zone cream.  He said that it sup­presses the immune sys­tem and could increase the risk of infec­tion due to scratch­ing.  Although he’s doing his level best not to scratch the bites, since The Son is still some­what lax in his hygiene habits I took the phar­ma­cists advice and went with the Benadryl gel instead.

Related posts:

1. Sick Kids & Misc Nec­es­sary Supplies
2. Lit­tle Spent & a Lit­tle More Done
3. Art, Movies, and Mom
4. $$: Meat and Potatoes
5. Day 165: Lunch, Din­ner, Gas, & Music Lessons