Where it all began (we think)....
Sebastian and his best friend Carson like to borrow each other's video games. We had made it clear several times that when he was borrowing the games they were his responsibility, this includes protecting them from Madeline and Keegan who both love to play and mistreat things. Sebastian borrowed "Pokemon Advance: Sapphire" for teh GBA a few weeks ago and since it's case was a bright sapphire color and it had Pokemon this meant that Maddy loved the game and I would often find her playing it. He had also borrowed a James Bond game. This was all fine until Carson wanted his games back. All of a sudden Sebastian was at a complete lost to where Pokemon and the case to the Bond were. Now, for those of you who may not be up on your platforms, Gameboy Advance games (GBA) are all cartridges about 1x2 inches. VERY small and easy to misplace. This meant that it could have been anywhere and the search was on.
Sebastian looked in all the usual places, his room, the living room, and my bedroom. I checked the Durango, Maddy's room, and double checked where Sebastian looked. It was nowhere. As the hunt became more fruitless I became more and more agitated and the more agitated I get the louder my voice gets until eventually I was in full on yell mode. I became so frustrated that eventually I had to ask Brie to come home from work because I realized I wasn't calming down. Now, my kids are use to me yelling. That's the kind of Dad I am. I am passionate and I yell al lot, but very rarely to I get to the point where I don't calm right back down. In the heat of it all I took away every single video game and grounded Sebastian from ever playing another video game until Carson's were found. Soon Brie was home, she took a hold of the hunt and I took a time out. The missing items were not found.
The next morning Sebastian seemed fine. Everyone had calmed back down, but he was complaining of itching and I noticed a few red spots. I figured his dry skin had acted up and reminded him that he needs to be putting on lotion everyday, even when he doesn't itch. When he got home from school he said he was really, really itchy and when I went to check it out I realized he was now covered from the shoulders down in massive hives. But, to be honest, I really didn't think much about it. I asked what he had to eat and not remembering when the last time I had changed his sheets I had him remove them just in case. By the time Brie got home the hives had gotten worse and now they seemed to be forming on his neck and his face had a few red patches. Brie immediately recognized what was going on. Brie herself has a predispostion to getting hives and sensitive skin. Something Sebastian has inherited. She informed me that we had to do something because if they get bad enough they could cause him to suffocate. This was all news to me.
So we gave hime some Benadryl and immediately he got better, for the next 24 hours we gave him Benandryl every 4-6 hours and by the next afternoon he was back to normal. This got me worrying though. What triggered them, it wasn't a food allergy the best I could tell because he hadn't had anything outside of his normal diet. Could it have been the sheets? I'm sure I had changed them not to long ago. So I got on the internet and started doing some research. I searched for "hives" and "hives and autism" and read some information I did not know. I never found anything relating hives themselves to suffocation. What can happen in sever allergic reactions is that you can suffocate and get hives, but they are both the result of the allergy not of each other. I then discovered that a big cause of hives is stress. It clicked. There is a good chance that my anger at the loss of Carson's game, my constant yelling, and his fear of having lost it combined with Asperger's Syndrome had him stressing out so much that his body reacted by breaking out in hives. We will never really know for sure because I'll never let that happen again.
Eventually the game was found. He had left it in his pant pocket and it went through the wash. Luckily, it came out completely undamaged.
Posted by John at April 22, 2004 12:26 AM