Drama of the Day - Allergic Emergency

 Our poor little two year old had a terrible reaction to Cheetos today.  It landed us in the emergency room.  This is what he looked like after he had Benadryl.  When we first headed up to the clinic, his left eye was nearly swollen shut.

The picture is blurry, but this shows how bad the reaction was.  He's allergic to a lot of things, but I think this must have been his reaction to corn, since that's the most prevalent ingredient in Cheetos.  They ended up using an epipen on him.  Not fun.  It's definitely the worst reaction we've seen, and totally unexpected.  He was completely out of it - staring off into space, and unresponsive, but awake ... barely.

I was a little worried when we headed up there about how the four year old would do.  He usually has panic attacks at doctor's offices.  But he did really well.  His brother read him a story and he sat right where I told him to and waited patiently.

Thankfully we're home now and it's all good.  I am definitely going to have to make sure no food is left within his reach anymore.  We had actually been planning (with our pediatrician's blessing) to try re-introducing some of the foods he had tested positive to - and I was thinking of starting with corn.  Now I'm thinking I will have blood tests done to see if he's over some of the allergies instead of doing trial and error with food to avoid another day like today.  Seems like it's a pretty dangerous way to test him.  We were not expecting a reaction like this.  It was as bad or worse than the reaction to peanuts- except that they said he didn't have the bronchospasm breath sounds he would have with an anaphalactic reaction.  Thankfully! It was just a bad reaction and the epipen was more precautionary than emergent.  SO THANKFUL he's doing well now :)  His face is still a little swollen, but he seems to be back to his normal, active self.