Thursday, April 10, 2014

Fancy Buggy With Chilblains!

"The ideal couple said nothing in particular very beautifully all
the way to town.  Of course Gilbert was too profoundly stirred over
the prospect of seeing his old love to talk to his wife!  Anne
sneezed.  She began to be afraid she was taking a cold in the head.
How ghastly it would be to sniffle all through dinner under the
eyes of Mrs. Andrew Dawson, nee Christine Stuart!  A spot on her
lip stung . . . probably a horrible cold-sore was coming on it.
Did Juliet ever sneeze?  Fancy Portia with chilblains!  Or Argive
Helen hiccoughing!  Or Cleopatra with corns!"
Anne of Ingelside 








In late February Beatrice woke from a nap with an ugly looking welt on one of her fingers. We couldn't imagine what it could be from other than maybe a spider bite. Over the next week and a half it started looking uglier and uglier and on a Sunday afternoon I took her to an Urgent Care Clinic. The doctor took a quick look at her finger, told us it was a cellulitis infection, and prescribed an antibiotic. Within a few days the swollen welt had spread to all of her fingers and two of her toes. I took her in to see the pediatrician. He said it is not an infection, it is something vascular. Likely vasculitis. He wanted a few blood tests run. 

When all of her bloodwork came back normal the pediatrician recommended we take her to a rheumatologist.  We weren't able to get an appt until today.  Meanwhile her hands got no better and she started complaining about her hands and toes hurting her.  We of course scoured google searches of vasculitis to the point where we had worked ourselves up into a tizzy (ok well mostly I was in a tizzy, but Cla was definitely concerned...).  I had anxiety induced delusions of them immediately admitting her to the hospital to amputate her fingers....and that is only a slight exaggeration.

So, they studied her hands and feet, looked at her hands under a magnifier, asked heaps of questions, did some mild poking and prodding....The outcome?  She is chilblains.....CHILBLAINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Everything I know about chilblains I learned from Victorian novels.  And specifically remembered Anne of Green Gables associating them with things utterly unromantic!

So, how does a 2yr old get chilblains, which is basically a cold injury???  With this very very cold and snowy winter we had she literally never went outside.  Not even to play in the snow.  It was simply TOO cold.  Their theory??  When you have a little crittter like Buggy who has no body fat (she is 22lbs and 2yrs old) and with heating oil being what it is....so you keep your house at a very brisk 63-64 degrees.  Well, apparently this is actually cold enough for an underweight child to be unable to regulate their temperature and therefore sustain a cold injury.....IN THE HOUSE!

Her case is pretty bad and will need to be treated medically with some medication after we jump through a few more medical hoops and we must always make sure that she is appropriately bundled (no more running around buck naked for Buggy!).

And this, my friends, is another example of the strange and unusual medical maladies that it seems ONLY my kids can suffer!!!!!  Poor Buggy!  

7 comments:

Leila said...

Poor poor baby!
I saw this on FB and clicked through -- isn't it funny (in a sad, loss-of-collective-memory way) that such a simple thing was missed by so many medical people?
Forgive me for popping in here to remind you of these posts of mine, which I wrote for people like us who do have to keep the heat low, about the things I learned along the way:
http://www.likemotherlikedaughter.org/category/how-to-dress-your-child-in-cold-weather/
(read up from the bottom) -- maybe it will help for next year.
Many just don't remember how to dress for the cold, and how to dress the children!

Jamie Carin and Claudio Romano said...

Thanks Leila!! I will check your link. Part of our issue is 1. she is potty training and 2. she hates being dressed. So we bundle her up and she peels it off. And I have 4 little ones aged 6 down to 2M....so, admittedly, I am not re-dressing her immediately.

Anonymous said...

Okay I feel a bit more sorry for my husband who complains that 66 degrees is too cold. But I like to keep the temp down and the bills down. Plus I just put on a sweater. But, in any case, poor Buggy! I never heard of such a thing! jae

Katherine T. Lauer said...

Poor Buggy! Seriously, your kids do have some wild injuries and medical events. Keeps things exciting!

Leila said...

Potty training is a tricky stage! Mine always stripped all the way, so silly.
I think if you read my posts you will see that it's not about adding sweaters, which most toddlers can't stand -- it's about maintaining core temp with undershirts and light layers. They can have freedom of movement but still be warm.
God bless!

Jamie Carin and Claudio Romano said...

Katherine, no joke, I worry about being accused of being a Munchausen by proxy because there is always some ridiculous thing going on. Just all these stupid little things.

Leila, I will definitely check out your link and thank you for commenting and sharing your wisdom. I LOVE LOVE LOVE your blog! God Bless.

A Joyful Chaos said...

Poor baby! The only time I heard about chilblains was in the quote you shared from one of the Anne books.

I had no idea you could get a cold injury like that!