Anthony Seems To Be Allergic To Cats
Anthony laughs
while having pizza for dinner
Feeling better, Anthony Enjoying his First(?) Pizza

On Sunday we made a short visit to our next-door neighbors, a pleasant retired couple with grandkids ranging from a bit older than Anthony to adult. Fumie and Anthony had plans, so we intended to stop in just to say “hi” and show off Anthony, whom they hadn't seen in two years.

We stayed for about 15 minutes, and left as Anthony started to get a bit fussy.

Five minutes later, as Fumie got Anthony situated in the car for them to go out, we realized why he was getting so fussy: his entire face was breaking out in hives. We immediately suspected a cat allergy: the couple had a cat they hadn't had before.

It just kept getting worse, and within a few minutes his whole face was swollen, as were parts of his arms. But other than watering eyes, it didn't seem to bother him too much. He wasn't having trouble breathing, or anything like that, so I wasn't too worried about it. We gave him a light shower to rinse off the cat dander or whatever it was, and gave him an ice cream to enjoy while we monitored the situation.

It was then that I noticed that his eyes were swollen, too. His eye lids had been swollen from the beginning, but now I noticed that the whites of his eyes themselves were swelling. The swelling was the size of a lima bean, and partially obscured his pupil.

This sort of freaked me out.

Fumie was less freaked out than I, and in fact had noticed the eyeball swelling some time before I did. She had previously seen something similar when I had pinkeye two years ago, so took it in stride.

Still, I gave my ER-nurse sister a call to consult. She suggested getting him in front of a doctor, so I looked up a close urgent-care clinic (via the always convenient Yahoo! Yellow Pages) and brought him in. After 15 minutes of paperwork and 40 minutes of waiting, a doctor looked at him.

“Yup, seems to be an allergic reaction. It'll get better by itself, but you can give him some Benadryl or Clariton if you want. May as well. Worry about eyeball damage? Nah, the eyeball is very tough.”

By the time we got out and could get some Benadryl, he was mostly recovered, except for he eyeball and the lower eyelids. By the next morning he had recovered completely.


One comment so far...

Wow, I would be very freaked out. My wife has some allergies, but I am very allergic to cats, dogs and the like. We’ve been careful to closely monitor our daughter when she’s been around animals, so far she hasn’t had any negative reaction (whew!) but if I saw her eyeballs swell I would I wouldn’t be too much of a wreck while I drove her to the emergancy room.

Well, at least if it does happen, I’ll be calmer now, after reading your post…

— comment by chad on August 4th, 2006 at 12:55pm JST (17 years, 8 months ago) comment permalink
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