Allergies

This one here -- he's been feeling a mite puny the last two weeks.

He caught a little cold, which promptly turned into an ear infection, for which we went through the usual course of antibiotics. And then after he was through with the antibiotics, he got a rash. Not just a little rash somewhere on his back or belly -- but a rash all over his body and alarming enough that the children's pastor at church put him in quarantine. So I took him over to the weekend kids' clinic where we waited for two hours, most of it in a cubicle with only a curtain separating Mace from all the wonderful rolling equipment with the buttons that light up. To keep him entertained, we watched all the videos I have of him and Casey stored on my camera many many times. When the doctor finally came in he ruled out Scarlet Fever (throat looked fine) and Fifth's Disease (his cheeks weren't ruddy), shrugged his shoulders and said, "Probably just something viral he picked up." I'm ready for him to drop it back off, cause the rash is lingering in spots and he still has a runny nose and a cough.

I'm starting to think (prepare yourself, this is big) that my mother might be right. My kid has allergies.

Growing up, my mother was not the chicken soup kind of mom. If I went to her and said, "Mom, I don't feel good." Her response, without fail, was, "Well did you take something?" Meaning -- had I self-medicated already? My usual response was "No, ma'am" (I was nothing if not polite as a child, even when I was sick). To which, Mom would say, "Well then, I don't feel sorry for you." (I'm pretty sure this is when I developed my pill-taking phobia -- I still can't swallow pills without chewing them first.)

Also, we never had colds as children. Not one. We had allergies. Granted, we lived in Georgia, where pollen coats the entire state yellow for at least two or three months a year, but still, to never pick up a virus? Seems unlikely.

So when my own kids are sick and my mom diagnoses them over the phone with, "It's allergies" -- it rubs me the wrong way and brings back memories of me as a six year old trying to get the child-proof cap off the Dimetapp bottle so that I could take some before I went to tell Mom I couldn't breathe and my throat felt like I'd swallowed an SA8 pad (that's steel wool for all of you who grew up in non-Amway households).

But. Mace has a clear runny nose, an unexplained rash, and a lingering cough. He is eating like a toddler (on again, off again) and doesn't have a fever.

The boy has allergies.