The night after our 4th of July picnic, Lego Lover came to me complaining of itchiness. This is a relatively common complaint from him and seems to mainly be caused by dry skin, I guess. But on this particular night, I happened to look at his arms and saw there were raised bumps all over them. This was no ordinary itchiness. Further investigation showed spots all over his arms, upper legs and chest with angry looking red patches under his arms. My first thought was hives but I wasn’t completely sure of it so I woke the Scientist and he wasn’t sure either. Then I called a health advice phone service available locally to speak to a nurse. After much discussion, she seemed to think it could be chicken pox. Since Lego Lover had this many years ago, I was somewhat doubtful about that being the cause but we operated under the assumption that it could be a second case of chicken pox just in case. What kept running through my head was that if this was chicken pox, it was going to a really awful case. He already had hundreds and hundreds of spots. After giving him Zyrtec and putting lots of cream on the itchy spots, I put him to bed.

Sunday morning I noticed that some of the spots had faded so presumed it probably wasn’t chicken pox. But I did take him to see a local gp, who confirmed that it wasn’t chicken pox but hives and apparently some eczema. I was told to keep him on the Zyrtec and use calamine lotion and/or whatever was recommended by the pharmacist. What a relief to confirm it wasn’t chicken pox and it wasn’t contagious. Fortunately we didn’t have to alter plans to go to a family lunch that day.

Over the past week and a half, the hives have faded considerably but are still there. We’ve no idea as to the trigger but I’ve noticed they get a bit worse for a while, especially at night, but then they get a bit better too. We haven’t been to see our regular gp as yet because they haven’t been bad enough (after the first several days) to warrant further medical attention.  Hopefully they will simply resolve and disappear on their own in near future.