YIKES!

So I hinted a couple of days ago a little something about Lyme's disease. Well...The Gooch has got it, or at least he's being treated for it. We went camping in Upper New York State on Victoria day weekend, and when we got home on Monday night we noticed a red bite on the Gooch's tummy, but I thought it was a mosquito bite and dediced to wait to see what would happen. Fast forward three days later and his little "innocent" bite is now the shape of a bull's eye or target about an inch in diameter. Internet here I come! Now, normally I'm not one to believe everything that's on the Net, but I kinda knew what I was looking for, and the Net seemed to prove to me that our little Goochie has somehow gotten bitten by a deer tick and now appeared to have the typical bull's eye rash associated with it. I called my pediatrician, and in we went to see her. We were put in isolation...not that Lyme's disease is contagious, but ya never know---after all I was diagnosing my son based on some pictures I had seen on some skin/rash website. Our pediatrician was a little leery to say that it was indeed Lyme's disease cause The Gooch didn't have the flu like symptoms to go with my story...hmmm, I wasn't convinced, but I thought I'd give it one more day.

Woke up in the morning and found THIS in my little guy's tummy:


Yup, I was SURE it was Lyme's, so back we went to the pediatrician's...and back we went into isolation...

She still wasn't convinced, but wanted a second opinion from a dermatologist. Sure. No Problem. NOT! There was not one dematologist on the West Island who cold see my guy until OCTOBER!!!! Say what? THIS IS AN EMERGENCY PEOPLE! But I digress...

We ended up in the emergency department of the Montreal Children's Hospital (great place by the way---and it has NOTHING to do with the fact that I work there!) I had worked the night before, so keep in mind that I was a little giddy and WAAAYYYYY overtired from a 12 hour shift, but everyone was awesome and very understanding, and after three and a half hours of seeing every specialty under the sun, voila! he'll be treated for Lyme's disease. No duh. So we started a three week course of Amoxil. The Gooch was a trooper and he took his meds VOLUNTARILY, God love him!

And then, six days later, THIS happened...




I have to admit, that even though I'm a nurse and suspected an allergic reaction to the Amoxil, I was still FREAKED OUT! So, off to the pediatrician's office again, but this time with a different rash, still the same isolation room (they really gotta change up the books in that room cause we must have read them a dozen times each...)

So, we changed the antibiotic to Ceftin and headed back down to New York and some more camping with the ticks (but we had some DEET with us this time!) We tried to give The Gooch the new med and he vomited EVERYWHERE! Add this to the fact that our poor little trooper now has big time diarrhea from the Amoxil... We never did get a dose of that med into him, and the poor guy vomited a couple more times after that as well.

Oh, and his rash got WORSE before it got better:



Well, we came home on Sunday night, very tired, and on Monday we changed his med once again, and this time it seems to be working (except that we have to bribe The Gooch with M&M's with every dose...smalll price to pay I'd say)

And THAT'S what's been going on with me!