Eczema

This cute little boy has eczema.  

I took him into the doctors to check on a rash that seemed to come and go and then it took a turn for the worse. 

He took one look and he said its eczema. 

Yeah diagnosed, not knowing much about it, I had heard the word before, I thought great give me the cream to clear it up and we will be on our way.

What there is not magic clear up cream?

Nope

Out came the laundry list:

change detergents
change soap
use lotion daily
no frangances
no dyes. 
use zrytec for childern
could be a cause be a food allergy
so what has he been eating a lot of? 
dairy. 
take out dairy.


So I took my list home and googled eczema.  

My heart broke as I looked at pictures and read.  I thought no my boy doesn't have eczema he was misdiagnosed.

Read more.

He fit ever symptom, EVERY symptom.  This is something we now will live with.  We can do our best to avoid "triggers" and then when an out break occurs do our best to tame the evil rash.  

Even thought I wanted to think it was a misdiagnoses, at the same time I was so happy to have a diagnoses. Because everything fell into the place.

For the past few months the child had literally been driving me nuts.  It was just about all I could do to get through a day with him.    He would cry at the drop of dime.  He would scream his hands hurt and not let me touch them.  He would bump into something and dissolve into tears.  He was defiant and mean. A total personality change.  But he had no fever, no running nose, nothing but a silly rash that came and went and Mama didn't think a thing about.

After he was diagnosed and the rash began to disappear Matteo slowing became Matteo again.  He is now back to a happy and smiley boy.  He is listening well.  He will hold my hand crossing the street.  He gives his brother love and he very rarely dissolves into tears now. 

I feel like a totally loser mom that my child was itchy and in pain and I wrote it off as the terrible 3's!  Oh well I can only move forward right.

I did everything the doctor told me including taking him off milk and the rash is finally gone. 

He has been off of milk for 2 weeks and now we are adding it back into his diet to see if it really was the trigger.  If it was not the trigger then the detergents and the soaps were.  We will see.   We did have a rash out break the first week of swimming but now we have a regime of showering immeditly after and lotioning, that seemed to solve the problem.

We are blessed that it seems to be mild case, some of the those google images are scary!   We have a whole new skin regime, including oatmeal baths, dove sensitve and cetaphil lotion.  (at first Matteo was not so sure about lotioning every night, now he loves it!!)

The most interesting thing I learned is that eczema can cause excess ear drainage (like wax). Well, I always teased Matteo that he had the most waxy ears in the world.  Everyday I would clean them out and then the next morning there would be another huge wax ball!!  It was amazing.  Now, no waxy balls, I am not kidding I haven't cleaned the kids ear in a week.  Its the little things right.