Licking Leaves

The other night Emma came to me and I noticed that her right eye was beginning to swell shut. I also saw that she had a red rash starting to cover the right side of her face. I was a bit alarmed, but because it was so late at night I decided to wait until morning to decide whether or not I needed to take her to the doctor. I kind of thought it might be pink-eye but I could not see anything oozing out of her eye. It had me puzzled.

The next morning she woke up and came into my bedroom and I immediately knew that we were going to be taking a trip to the doctors. The rash had spread considerably and her eye was barely open. It had also started to spread to the other side of her face. I was racking my brain to see if she had eaten any new food or been around some kind of chemicals. Nothing. She could not think of anything. I was pretty sure that it was just an allergic reaction to something and after talking to the doctor, he agreed and put her on multiple medications to clear it up. He also told me that we may never know what caused this.

Well...after we left the doctor's office and we were heading to get our prescriptions, Emma suddenly thought of something. She turned to me and said "I did lick a leaf yesterday." To which I replied "What? Why would you do that?" She then told me in a matter of fact tone, "I wanted to see if it would stick to the window." Aha! Who knows what was on that leaf? Pesticides? Insecticides? Fertilizer?

So, the moral of this story (and Emma has learned this the hard way), is NOT TO LICK LEAVES or you may get a nasty, itchy, red rash.
These pictures do not do the rash justice, but you get the idea. It was even spreading to the other side of her face and behind her ears. This picture was taken a few hours after her initial dose of medicine. I did not think to take pictures for my blog any earlier...bummer. Below is another picture of Emma. I had told Christopher to get out of the way and just as I clicked the picture, he flew through the air behind her to make me mad! That kid!!! (And no, I did not get mad)