Ummmm, do you think this looks serious?

I noticed the red spot on Friday.  I don’t know if it was on Friday morning or Friday afternoon, but I know that some time on Friday, I saw that Conor had a red spot on his upper arm.  I figured that some bug had bitten him.  It wasn’t swollen like a mosquito bite, but then again, I knew we were in the desert and he was unlikely to have to deal with mosquitoes. 

I checked it again on Saturday and it was still there and it was still red.  It was about the size of a quarter, but it really didn’t seem to bother him that much.  He wasn’t scratching it and except for us looking at it, he didn’t notice it at all.

Then on Sunday morning, I saw that it had blisters, huge big blisters, swollen to the point of looking very scary. 

Seeing blisters the size of a quarter on one’s son’s tiny arm is enough to make this mother freak out a little bit.  The first thing I thought of was a spider bite.  There are so many spiders in California, and in fact, Dave taking charge killed a big furry one walking along the bed in anger after seeing Conor’s arm.  (We later decided it was a mistaken spider murder, but we figure we’ll be forgiven) 

The only problem was that we couldn’t call our pediatrician’s office to find out what we should do.   We are one of the last people in the world without a cell phone.  Conor seemed fine enough but there was a ginourmous blister on his arm of suspicious origin.  Should we go to Urgent Care (not right around the corner in 29 Palms, I’d like to add!) or could we wait and see the doctor back in Charlotte.  For all we knew, it could be poison ivy from our own back yard!

I can lead you through the blow by blow of what we decided, but I think instead I’ll give you the highlights.  They involve a pharmacist friend in the wedding party, an RN who works as the hostess in the Inn’s restaurant and Web MD. 

It’s unlikely that it was a spider bite (sorry dead furry spider!) because they blister up quickly, they are very painful, and they are more likely to be a hard lumpish sort of think.  Conor had no problem with us touching it (thus not painful) and we could tell by touching it wasn’t hard. 

It was, however, likely to be plant poison, possibly from one of the cacti around our Inn or even from our quick trip to Joshua Tree.  Plant poisons can take days to blister and we heard from the RN that the points of cacti (I really like saying cactuses better) contain poison.  They wouldn’t affect us as we are big people, but a little toddler could react to it! 

The whole blister thing has taken nearly a week to resolve.  Today, he only has a scar in that spot, but it’s a huge, ugly purplish scar which we are now putting kiddie Mederma on.  It never did itch and it never did weep, so we’re ruling out poison ivy.  I swear I recall that on the first day he walked into a plant, but I could be wrong. 

It’s times like those that make me think we should get a cell phone.  But then again, it was Web MD that gave us the list of when to go to the doctor because of unknown rashes and blisters. 

OK.  I’m off to try to still catch up from our trip out west.  Vacations in the middle of the semester suck. 

8:28:50 PM