Day 80

If we’ve learned to expect anything, it is that anything is to be expected.  It has been three weeks without heavy-duty chemo so things should go smoothly right?  I mean, she takes her nightly chemo and weekend bactrim but we are on hiatus from the heavy hitter until this Thursday.  So what the heck happened and why is she covered in hives and burn-like welts?

Gene got a call at 2 today that Kennedy was a bit itchy on her head, likely because she was playing with scotch tape, affixing hair strands to her head.  We didn’t think much of it, just a bit of an allergic reaction to adhesive.  Boy were we wrong.  I had a personal training session scheduled at 6 and had a bit of time to stop home on the way from work to check and see what was going on.  When I got home, Kennedy had sunburn like patches all over her body.   Needless to say, I didn’t make it to the gym and went into fix-it mode (or is it "try to fix-it" mode?).  I gave K some Benadryl and made a call to the doc (with a double check call to cousin Nicole who is also a pediatrician).  The diagnosis is that she is likely allergic to one of her meds with the culprit being bactrim.  5% of the population is allergic to sulfa in bactrim but we won’t know until she tries it again in 2 weeks.  The bad thing is that bactrim helps her fight off a possible PCP infection that could cause life-threatening pneumonia.

We also learned about another med tonight that has an interesting effect on Kennedy - Benedryl.   Benadryl makes her bounce around like a clown and as soon as the dose kicks-in, instead of her getting drowsy, she gets extremely hyper.  It was some light comedy in the midst of her itchy misery.  She literally was bouncing off the walls, running from one to another and pushing off, then becoming a frog and hopping around the room.  The Benadryl eased the itch and infused some energy but unfortunately, after just 4 hours, the hives, redness and itchiness returned with a vengeance and now Benadryl is doing no good.  Gene called the doc for the second time and we were told to watch to make sure she can breathe and if the reaction doesn’t subside by the morning, to go into clinic for a shot of something stronger.  We tried and Epsom salt bath and covering her in calamine lotion.  Now we wait.  As of this moment, she is in our room itching.