The fire ant and the EPI pen!

Well, we had a little scare over the weekend. Friday night all the kids were out playing in the front yard. I had noticed Thursday that there seemed to be quite a few ants in the driveway/yard, etc. I've been told they were coming out of the wood work because of the 3 weeks of rain we've had. Anyway, I had gotten a couple of bites on the top of my foot Thursday night but didn't think much about it until Friday. I saw so many ants that I couldn't see the pavement. I got out the Amdro and started the killing spree. In the meantime, Izabella was doing some kind of "go away ant" dance at the same time. Can you guess what happened next? That's right, she got bit on the pinkie toe! She started screaming and went inside and I gave her a benedryl. About 15 minutes later she was real itchy and I took her in the bathroom to check everything out. By the time we got in the bathroom, she had turned a nice red color ALL over. Then I notice hives popping up EVERYWHERE on her body. When I say everywhere, imagine any skin of hers that you could see was now red, puffy and hive-y! On top of that, her eyes were swollen, lips were 3x the size and purple. Cheeks were blue. We jumped in the car and were off to urgent care. She had no complaints of not being able to breathe. It took about 10 mins to get to the urgent care, by which time I could see that everything I just described above was about 10x worse. I'm not exagerating either!

They took her back right away and gave her a shot of epinephrine to calm the reaction but the hives were just not going away. They watched her for about 10 minutes and then decided that she needed to have some fluids, so they gave her a saline drip to help flush out the poison. The poor thing, she took the shot with not 1 tear and then when I had to explain to her about the IV, she listened and looked scared but didn't cry one bit when they did that either. I was SO proud of her. She was very quite the whole time and just wanted to make sure she was doing everything that the Dr. told her the right way. We stayed for about 2 1/2 hours until it seems that everything was under control. She's been on a steroid for the last few days and now has to carry an EPI pen with her everywhere. I have one on me too. They told me that typically, if they are bitten again, the reaction can be worse than the original one. Which means, she could have breathing problems the next time it happens. WHEW! what a night. We've never been allergic to anything before this but now we know Izabella and red fire ants DO NOT mix! She went to school this week and quickly told everyone about her ordeal. I'm just glad nothing worse happened and we were able to get to urgent care so quickly and life is now back to normal. Well........as normal as it gets in The Mingolla Kingdom!