poison ivy, anyone?

It all started with a spill on the sidewalk, and a scratch and scab across his face. It morphed day-to-day from an injury to a massive, painful-looking rash.

9 days later, he looks like the bottom picture. The picture on the left was yesterday, right after I took him to the peditrician. The medical student/resident/intern who looked at him, and was for sure no older than Lexi Grey herself, had to go get another dr. for a second opinion. (It you don't know who Lexi Grey is, SHAME ON YOU FOR NOT WATCHING GREY'S ANATOMY!) They concurred that they had no idea what in the hell it was, and sent us on our way with antibiotics. I seriously have GOT to find some new pediatricians.

By this morning, he looked like the last picture (you have to scroll down.) Scary, like a tiny Mike Tyson post-fight with big swollen eyes. And you can't even see the rest of his rash-covered body, which is equally as bad (makes you want to scratch yourself just looking at it, doesn't it?) It was at that point that I pulled in a favor from a client who is finishing his residency in pediatric dermatology and he got us a spot this afternoon at the clinic where he works at UNC.

Luckily, it is *just* poison ivy. A disgusting, wicked case of it, but at least it isn't some of the other horrible ideas that kept popping into my mind. We are almost positive he got it at the park where Miller's baseball games are held, because we have not seen any of it here . They prescribed prednisone... we're curious if this will actually make the kid - gasp! - eat. Like real food.

The completely sucky thing about my kids getting any sort of medical ANYTHING is that because we have private-pay insurance due to me being self-employed, we will probably never meet our deductible, which is $5000 a year for in-network providers (and double that for out-of-network - sweet!!) It was either that, or we were going to continue having a mortgage-sized monthly insurance payment. (Right now it is only new-Lexus-sized.) So that means that one case of poison ivy could end up being a very costly issue. God bless the USA and its totally WHACKED health/insurance system. But I digress. What is most important is that my tiny man is going to be fine. Ugly for awhile, but fine.