Not Daddy's Happiest Birthday

Poor Duane. Today has got to be one of the least happiest birthdays he'd had. I mean, how often do you end up at Children's Urgent Care on your birthday?

I'll try to condense this a bit. The W. family went to church this morning. As we were waiting for the service to begin, a very close friend of the family gave Ryan a few bites of the organic puffed rice bar her son was eating. We didn't think too much about it. We had a nice church service and planned on going to Target afterwards.

Wesley was hungry and asked if we could please go out to lunch. Duane said that was OK, so we loaded into the van to go. As soon as Ryan got in the van he started screaming. We figured he was just hungry and would be OK when he got some food into him. The restaurant was five minutes away and he screamed the entire way there. He screamed in the restaurant too. He screamed when we tried to give him crackers. Duane and I took turns taking him outside and trying to calm him down. But NOTHING was working. By this time he had been screaming crying for about half and hour or so. Duane suggested we ask the waitress to make our order to go.

I took Ryan outside and suddenly noticed a rash on his side. On closer inspection, the rash covered his stomach, went down one arm and was really red and irritated looking in his arm pit.
We thought Ryan might be having an allergic reaction to something so we drove to Children's Urgent Care. While Duane drove I called Grandma to have her meet us there and to find out what was in the bar Ryan ate.

The folks at Children's Urgent Care were wonderful. They called for an allergy check (breathing check) as soon as we walked in and we didn't have to wait for a room. We did have to wait quite a while for the doctor though (since Ryan was breathing just fine.) Unfortunately we didn't get any answers. The doctor said that the timing of the rash's onset strongly suggests food allergy - the bar contained coconut and honey, but no peanuts. However, the fact that the rash was pretty localized and only on one side of his body suggests a viral infection. So, basically we got a dose of benedryl and a recommendation to call Dr. M. tomorrow.

I'm really glad it wasn't more serious, but I won't be completely at ease until we figure out what's causing this. Luckily Ryan's eating just fine now and acting completely normal.