Taylor + red rash + leg/ankle swelling - HSP

Today started out like every other day. We slept in and had a lazy morning. My sister picked up Taylor around 11:30 this morning to head up to their church to get ready for a VBS fundraiser. Matt, Nana, Caleb, Madison and me headed down to Market Square to check out the Dogwood Arts Festival (post to come on that another time). We got a call about 3 from Taylor saying she had some bug bites and could we bring the cortizone cream. Since we weren't home they just picked some up at Walgreens. Well about 6:30 my sister called and said the "bites" were everywhere and Taylor's leg and ankle were swollen pretty bad. We hopped in the car and ran over to the church where we were expecting to see some bites and minor swelling. What we saw was this....



We went ahead and gave her some benadryl and decided we would be heading on to Children's. We were thinking she had gotten into something but were concerned about the swelling. We got there and they got us checked in. The immediately said they were almost 100% sure she had HSP. We had never heard of this. They put in an IV, did some blood work and checked her urine but came back pretty quickly with a "yep, she has HSP and there really isn't anything we can do besides treat the pain". HSP stands for Henoch-Schonlein Purpura. It causes the blood vessels to become inflamed and is extremely painful and looks pretty bad too. It is caused when a person's immune system doesn't fight an infection like it is supposed to. It normally occurs after a child has been sick with a bacterial or viral infection. It happens normally in the spring and affects kids ages 2-11. It may never happen again and it may. We are praying it doesn't. It is not contagious. The symptoms can last 4-6 weeks. Right now she can't go to school b/c the swelling is causing so much pain that she can't walk which means she can't go to school (we are hoping it is better by next week and she can return to school). The bad thing is that it can affect her kidneys and bowels so she will be going in to have weekly blood/urine checks. If they start seeing abnormalities we will be heading back to Children's but for now we just treat the pain with Loritab. There is no way to prevent or treat this as of right now :( They told us it may get worse (and we saw some literature that showed us worse) before it gets better. You can google it if you want to know more about it.

I am asking everyone to pray for my baby girl. Taylor never gets sick. This is the 1st time she has been to a hospital as a patient. She was so brave. It broke my heart to see her crying b/c she was scared and it hurt. Then she cried b/c she couldn't go to school. Her birthday is this week and we have planned her party but it won't be for a few weeks (boy, am I glad we didn't plan to have it the weekend of her birthday). She is scared that it may affect her kidneys.

I am asking for you guys to pray for some specific things:

Pray that there is no damage to her kidneys or bowels.
Pray it doesn't get worse.
Pray that the pain will subside.
Pray that it won't ever happen again.

Here are a few pictures from tonight. We took the camera so I could blog and scrapbook about it, cause that is what good moms do....always looking for good material :)

Waiting on the dr


One of her legs


Her IV


Chilling and watching cartoons after a dose of Loritab