First visit to the Emergency Room and The End of Annabelle's Worst Day

Yesterday Annabelle's first year shots, being somewhat delayed because I misplaced my wallet with her Medical Insurance card, were only the start of what is probably the worst day she's ever had.
At about 8:00 PM last night during dinner Annabelle starting screaming and kicking her legs like she was having a tantrum. She starting furiously rubbing her eyes and I thought that she had gotten something in them as much as she was fussing and messing with them. So I took her into the kitchen for better light to see if I could see anything in her eyes and immediately noticed little welts all over her face and the back of one of her hands. Obviously this freaked me and her dad out so we decided after calling our mothers (both nurses) that the emergency room was the best idea and that she probably had Hives. We weren't sure at first because the  Hives had started to go down, and because I had misplaced her Medical Insurance card and the hospital that has her insurance on file was about twice as far away as the one we ended up going to because of distance. Fortunately, they saw us even without the Medical Insurance card, and they will probably send us the Medical bill by mail. As soon as I find the Medical Insurance card I can call the hospital and they will forward the bill to the Insurance company. This is how she looked in the waiting room last night.

This picture isn't the greatest but you can see how swollen her face still was by the time we got there. Most of the Hives went down on the way to the hospital, but the swelling didn't go down for another hour. When we were finally seen, only about 10-15 min after we got there, they took her vitals and gave us a room. Over the next two hours we suffered the typical hospital wait lightened only slightly by an Adam Sandler movie. They finally told us nothing we didn't already know, that she had a reaction to something. It could have been to one of her first year shots she had yesterday morning, it could have been to something in dinner, or it could have been something she picked up around the house. This annoyed me quite a bit that they couldn't have told us sooner, her Hives had been gone within a half hour of being there. As nice as the staff was as this hospital, they just really didn't seem to know what they were talking about. In the future we will definitely drive a little bit further and take her to her birth hospital. Her birth hospital is more professional, I trust the doctors there, and they already have Annabelle's Insurance on file. Anything to make a situation like this less stressful would have been done at our normal hospital. Me and her father agree that it was either dinner or something she picked up because she only had it on her face and the back of one of her hands, like it had spread from one to the other. As we wiped her face with baby wipes because we had give her some juice we noticed the Hives going down fairly quickly, so we know it probably was not her shots that caused the Hives. We hadn't had anything new for dinner that she hadn't had many times before fish and green beans. We think it may have been either the canola oil I used, because I usually just use butter, or the fact that we bought the fish at Walmart this time instead of Hy-vee where we usually do. 

When we were finally released to go home, about two hours after we arrived, with nothing in regards to treatment other than a dose of antihistamine, we thought Annabelle deserved at least something small to make her day end a little better. So we got her favorite food, Chicken Nuggets. She went to bed relatively happy considering the day she had gone through.

Here's Annabelle happy and all cleared up this morning.

Lessons learned from this situation, stick with your family doctor or hospital whenever you can, trust me it will make you feel so much better than having complete strangers examine and decide the treatment for your child. At least at your family hospital you know that even if your primary doctor isn't examining your child or deciding on treatment, one of his/her colleagues is. And don't let your 1 year old go through your diaper bag and hide your wallet. Not having your Medical Insurance card in an emergency just ups the stress that much more. You can't help but worry about how you'll pay for it even if you're pretty sure your insurance will cover it.