Attack of The Vicious EGG and the Cunning Cheerio

Yesterday morning, the Geek let me sleep in just a little bit.  At 8:30 a.m., he walked from the living room, where all the boys were hanging out, to our bedroom, and said “Mama, get out of bed!”.  I woke up and said “OK”, he turned and walked back towards the living room.

As he reached the kitchen, he saw that in that 30 second time span, Mr. Charm had pushed the trash can over to the fridge, opened it, climbed up, GOTTEN AN EGG, AND CRACKED THE TOP OFF!

He was holding the egg as if to drink it from its shell!

Holy Epi-pen, Batman!

The Geek grabbed the egg from Mr. Charm, threw ALL the eggs away, and hugged him tightly.

(Why did we have eggs in the house?  Because they gave them to us on WIC – even though WIC KNOWS they are a deadly allergen for my son.  They also gave us Cow Milk, even though they know THAT is also a deadly allergen for my other son and an intestinal intolerance for Mr. Charm – in other words, they give the Woman, Infant, and Child(ren) in this house foods that none of them can eat.  There’s government for you!  

We no longer accept WIC, for the record.  Without needing elemental formula, we couldn’t stomach taking the assistance any longer.  It just takes us that long to go through a dozen eggs in this house that they were still in the fridge.

And seriously – how FAST is this KID??  30 seconds to change rooms and get into something that dangerous…I swear I can’t turn my back on him for a second!)

An hour later, I heard Mr. Charm shouting at Mr. Happy “No! No! No! NO!” and looked to see what the ruckus was about.

Mr. Happy was smiling at Mr. Charm as he raised his little, chubby hand to his mouth.

Oh, no, what did he just eat!

I raced over, swiped it out of his mouth and – wouldn’t you know it?  A Cheerio.  

While I Was Sleeping (such a cute movie, don’t you think?) from Strep this weekend the Geek decided that he’d just let Mr. Charm eat what he wanted to eat, fructose or not.  And Mr. Charm wanted Cheerios.  So there are dried up pieces of Cheerios all over this house, even after sweeping and vacuuming the floors several times.  (That makes him sound bad, right?  In actuality, Mr. Charm has been on an eating strike, the Geek himself wasn’t feeling 100% this weekend, and he didn’t feel like fighting a toddler over food.  I’ve been there myself.)

Mr. Happy had found at least one of those dried up pieces and was eating it.

For what it’s worth, Mr. Charm (who cannot resist disobeying us when we insist he eat only in the dining room and not in the living room) apparently DOES understand the explanation we gave him: the food you are eating will make your brother sick.  He cannot have it.  Keep the food in the dining room!

So even though he still eats in the living room whenever he thinks we’re not looking (ask me how exhausting this is!), he was still more than willing to get in his brothers face and tell him NO when Mr. Happy tried to eat some of the food.

Warms my little heart, I tell ya.  That boy LOVES his baby brother and really does look out for him.

You know, unless it means obeying mom and dad.  <sigh>

So, I grabbed Mr. Happy, threw the offending Cheerio away, and hugged him tightly.

Wow, you say.  Two close calls before 9:45 a.m.!  What an awful morning!

And I say, “But wait, there’s more!”

I gave the Geek and Mr. Charm haircuts after the Cheerio scare (yes, I cut all our hair now…did I mention our medical bills??), and as I was finishing up we smelled a horrific smell from Mr. Charm.  Pee-yew!  Dirty diaper time!

The Geek went to change him and it was a blow-out.  So, the clothes came off, the kiddo went into the tub.

Suddenly, out comes the Geek rushing a diapered but damp Mr. Charm into the living room.  

“LOOK AT THIS!” he yelled for me.  

I look.

“Where’s the diaper bag?”

The Geek went to get the diaper bag.  He returned.  While I held Mr. Charm, I directed him to the front pocket, he dug out the larger dose bottle of our compounded dipenhydramine (Benadryl), ran to the kitchen, quickly dumped it into water, stirred it and came back with it in a syringe.

He injected it quickly into Mr. Charms cute little mouth, and do you know what my sweetie said after Daddy had basically forced medication into his throat?

“Thank you!”

Altogether now…AW.

While we waited to see if that would be enough, the Geek went to get his camera.

It took a couple minutes for him to get things set up, so the dipenhydramine had already started working before we got any good shots.  Still, take a peek:

Seriously, under his hair his SCALP was covered in hives.

Apparently, two hours earlier, though foiled by his quick Daddy, Mr. Charm had gotten some of the egg on his hand that the Geek hadn’t realized.  When immersed in water due to the diaper blowout, he grabbed one of his toy cups, filled it with water, and drank it, as usual for him (I hate that he does that).  Somehow, it got that tiny residue of egg off his hand and into his mouth.

Think about how SMALL an amount of egg that was!  

<I’m shivering in fear at the thought.>

It happened so FAST.  If he had ingested any more of the egg than he did, I’m positive we would have used the Epi-pen and been in the hospital today.  

Thank you, God.  

We know both our boys are IgE to egg and dairy, but we have been SO blessed to have learned of this little fact through allergy testing at a very young age.  We’ve never, EVER actually experienced an IgE allergic reaction in either of our children.

Until today.  

Today, FPIES and Fructose Malabsorption really didn’t matter that much.  It could have been so much worse than it was.  IgE allergies hit SO FAST.  SO SUDDENLY.  SO HARD.

What if I had left the diaper bag in the car the last time we came in?
What if I hadn’t actually put the dipenhydramine in the diaper bag, like I’d thought?
What if I’d actually put the Epi-pens back in my purse, where they usually are?

It worked out okay.  But it could have been so bad.  We’re definitely on high alert now; we will know where the dipenhydramine and the Epi-pens are AT ALL TIMES now.   (We usually do.  But being so fuzzy headed from being sick for so long…you wind up doing things you don’t normally do.  Now it will be a priority to force myself to focus on those things even when burning up with fever.)

And the Cheerio?  Well, I don’t know if Mr. Happy got anything beyond what I pulled out of his mouth.  He is reacting to something right now.  I don’t know if it is my antibiotic, or some other trace something he ingested.  So, honestly?  I figure we won’t really know if he ingested any Cheerios today or not.  It’ll blend into the reactions he’s already having.  His butt is blistered again.

Poor little guy has been one big FPIES reaction for the last 6 weeks.  I can’t stand it.  So much for our big plans of trialing foods in November and December.  At this rate, it will be the middle of January before we can even consider a food for him.

By the end of the day, both boys were fine.  Well, as fine as they’ve been for the last 6 weeks, which is not really fine at all…but alive, and fairly healthy – just not at baseline.

Ah, baseline.  I miss you so!

We managed to get a few pictures of them tonight that are so sweet.  So see for yourself how well the day ended up:

So, the two adventurous brothers survived another day.

And gave their mother some new wrinkles.