Alls Well.....

I ended my last post with those words and little did we know that Mark's body was beginning to go to war against itself.

He came home from Hawaii with a very inflamed and infected toe. On the one day we were home he went to the doctor who thought it was some kind of staph infection and put him on Bactrim, a type of sulfa drug. Of course, as the story goes, we rushed off to Vegas to see our grand baby enter the world. After the first week of antibiotics was done, Mark's toe still did not look 100 percent better, so he called his doctor who prescribed one more round of Bactrim.

On day 11 of taking the medicine, he woke with a really bad headache and looking back on it we realize his skin was taking on a weird color. On day 12 his knees ached severely and he took 4 ibuprofen and later went for a walk. After the walk we decided to head to our daughter's hot tub and we discovered Mark's lower body was covered in this really bizarre non blanching rash. They looked like really dark red and purple burns or bruises. I had recently been looking at rashes online for the baby and realized that he had a dangerous rash and needed to go a doctor ASAP. The doctor at the urgent care clinic thought it was the early stages of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and after contacting the ER Doctor gave him a shot of benedryl and rushed us off to the hospital . He began getting IV steroids at the hospital and was informed that he needed to be admitted because it could progress to a point that he would need life support. REALLY?! For a rash.

Apparently Mark is one of the few people each year who have this reaction to Bactrim. It is a rare type of autoimmune response and apparently it can progress to major organs being affected. It was scary and we called on friends to pray that his response would just stop and, praise God, it apparently has. He is still in the hospital for observation and meds to suppress his immune system, but besides being stir crazy, he is doing fine. Great really, considering what could have happened. Our current doctor says he has an apparently mild case of erythema multiform. We hope to get discharged soon so we can go back to our daughter's house to get back to the job of grand-parenting.