4 Month Old Son Is Tearing His Face Off

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Yes, a dermatologist is the first choice. But they have got an appointment only in February with the local dermatologist, and if the allergist is better... Check out also with the hospital if there is any other specialist in your area. Normally your health insurance should also pay for the transport, if you have to get elsewhere to get an emergency treatment.

But if you pop up at this dermatologist during surgery hours and you just say "this is an emergency. Look here, look there", and with the skin of your baby and his pains being like they are, you will get to see the doctor, even without threatening to sue him. You have to put yourself into the doctor s shoes. He has too many patients, and he has to justify with his other patients why your baby is the priority. That is much easier if you make it very urgent, and as long as you dont pop up, they prefer to think that it cant be that urgent. Reasonable patients wont mind to let you come first, or even renounce on their appointment, if necessary.

The doctor s office has its directives how to deal with patients and their pressing for an appointment, and they are often not empathetic enough to understand by phone how urgent it is. In your case, photos should normally help, so you could also try this first, ask yor their email address by phone and then ask in the email that the photos ought to be submitted to the dermatologist, add that your baby is in true pain and that you REALLY need an appointment in the next two days.

Then it might be good to know that an emergency treatment is directed by different laws compared to a normal treatment, see here for the US legislation: "A federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) requires almost all hospitals to provide treatment to all patients who need emergency medical treatment regardless of whether the patients have health insurance. ... If a denial of treatment lead to further injury, illness, or death of the patient, it's possible to recover damages similar to those in a medical malpractice claim. ... EMTALA does not apply to doctor’s offices. It only applies to hospitals."
http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/med ... tment.html
So "emergency" and "emergency treatment" is something like a miracle word with people who dont get or dont want to get that this is an emergency. Use it.

In your case, it is better not to go to the hospital the weekend and in the evening/night. They have just more personnel during workdays and daytimes, and so you will get a better treatment.

So, we found an alergist but we would have to drive to another state. There was no answer with a message that said they would call back in the next fourty eight hours. Three days later they called and said they wouldn't see us without a referal from the pediatrician. We called the Doc and had to wait for a call-back from them. We then called the allergist back and they said we couldn't get in until mid February. They said if it was urgent, go to the emergency room. I thought that "emergency" meant life threatening type of thing. I don't know. I think that if we still lived in a city, we could have found someone to see him by now but I wanted to live as far away from people as I could get. We really are pretty deep in the sticks.

I have been cleaning daily and washing my hands to the point that they are cracked and bleed at the knuckles everytime I bend my fingers. My wife tried that mountain man silver on him and it just made him turn red and sore. I think that if we could just stop the itching, he would stop rubbing his skin off. There was a steroid cream that my wife mixed up with something else and that was helping but how much steroids should an infant have.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

Do you have an urgent care clinic within a reasonable distance? I am a big advocate of not taking non-life-threatening stuff to the hospital ER...but sounds like you are running out of options here. I would park my butt somewhere with my kid and not leave til someone listened to me, I think. Poor baby. He needs to be seen sooner rather than later. If no one else will see him, i probably would go to the ER if you have no urgent care clinic and no dr who will see him. But i would certainly exhaust other options first. Just my 2 cents.

I imagine they might tell you to give him medicine or use steroid cream, is that ok with you OP?

Unfortunately, that kind of delay is not uncommon with allergist. I live in a big city and it's similar.

Question - have you tried oatmeal baths? And maybe calamine lotion? The calamine makes the kids look like zombies (leaves a white film) but sometimes it helps.

I have very little trust in pharmaceuticals. My goal is to pinpoint the cause and eliminate that. If this is something that we have to live with, we will have to do what is best for the baby. My main concern is that he is so young (his body is still building itself) and I fear that messing with his system chemically could cause permanent distortions resulting in life-long dependence on pharmaceuticals. Not yet, but I will wipe food on him if you think it could work. I will try almost anything at this point. I need to figure out how to stop the itching long enough for him to heal a bit, with something that won't blind him or something if he rubs it into his eyes.

You said your wife is breast feeding--has she eliminated the common allergens from her diet? If i were taking a stab in the dark at this type of thing, i would probably start there if the aggressive cleaning and keeping the cat away from him was not working.

I have kids who had/have issues with wheat, nuts, and soy. Some of the other common allergens that she may be consuming on a regular basis are milk and eggs. If your baby is sensitive enough, she may be passing something through her breast milk that he is reacting to.

It is hard to cut this stuff out, but sounds like you are looking for anything. Basically a meat and potatoes diet with very simple seasonings--no processed foods. Then, if it helps, add items back slowly and one at a time. Whichever one he reacts to is the culprit. You add stuff back one at a time so you can pinpoint the particular item.

I am not positive this would work, but it is another idea. This is what we did to pinpoint food allergies for our kids.

I may be misunderstanding, and
If so, I apologize if this seems harsh, but I think you are going in circles. I am going to suggest, since you are posting in Parents Forum not
The Haven, that you probably cannot have what you hope to achieve at least not right now. Though I understand wanting it.

It is possible there is a single avoidable substance, I've not met parents who had only one thing to avoid but it is possible. But....your baby is 4 months, probably nurses only, no food, you've written about scrubbing everything and an air cleaner and vacuuming daily.....what more do you think you are going to be able to do?

I think you are going in circles and sleep deprived and unhappy.
You tell us your child is suffering.

It is your decision what to do, but to refuse medication or cream out of fear of long term dependence is not warranted, allergic children don't stay allergic because they take antihistamines or use cream, not to say I don't understand wanting to avoid, I do. Be that as it may, if you really believe it, you still have a lot of things to balance and need to make a decision IMO what the priority is. Is it going drug free and cleaning in ways that don't work? That's fine....but then you are not willing to do almost anything IMO. I wish you well, and maybe your baby has 1-2 easily removable allergens, but if it was easy.....don't you think all your cleaning would have solved it?

I think you are making yourself crazy chasing a doctors appointment that granted is too far away, but I think you should consider what you will do when you get there and are likely given a number of things he is sensitive to such as dust, cats, perhaps some trees and flowers and foods (if they test him and he is very young to be tested, my friend had to wait until 6 months, though there is a blood test, but I have no idea if it is reliable in infants).

If you can't move, can't have the cat live elsewhere and aren't going to use steroids or medicine.... I suspect you are going to be very disappointed and your baby is going to suffer.

My aspie daughter in her 20s was having bad outbreaks on her arms. Her friends told her it looked like ringworm lesions which may have come from a cat. She used an over-the-counter ringworm medication which seemed to clear it up. But the lesions came back and with a vengeance. She made an appointment with a dermatologist but it was weeks in the future.

When I saw that she had open sores on her arms, I called the dermatologist's office and said that between the time of making the appointment and that day, what were just scaly patches were now open sores oozing clear fluid. This creates a risk of infection both inbound and outbound. I asked if, in view of this change, she could get in any sooner to see the doc. She was seen within 24 hours.

It turned out to be eczema, and using a mild hypoallergenic lotion regularly clears it up. My daughter does not like the sensation of lotion, but that's all that was needed, and she has to deal with it. My guess is that the ringworm medication "worked" simply because it was in a lotion base, and it was the lotion part that helped.

I'm not posting this to say your baby should be treated the same way, but only as an example of how it is sometimes possible to get in sooner to see a specialist.

While looking for cures, and btw i was shocked to hear the baby's soft spot got hurt by 'n' old brush, baby's not a shoe. Learning more about the physic of baby is important, along with healing the physical-emotional bond with baby-massage, learn/choose one on youtube
ex, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbCv6BBTV5c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjf7GvyPhWQ or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIv8bLgCwdA

It is not only the risk of a serious infection, it is mostly the constant pain. On a baby who is still developing a lot, constant pain has a more negative effect on his neurologic system than on an adult. The top priority must be pain relief.

I am usually also not much in favor of pharmaceuticals. I havent used any for my child as a baby or toddler, and for the last fifteen years I havent used any for myself. But in the acute or subacute phase of a severe atopic dermatitis, cortisone helps in most cases much better and quicker than anything else. I guess the steroid cream your wife uses is cortisone-based, isnt it? But it would be much better to get a prescription specifically for infants. Then the doctor might also first try out something milder. (I might appear like a specialist or someone who is affected herself or with a family member, but I am not.) Actually applying plenty of moisturizer several times a day, might be enough to relief pain, too.

As for your question: no, an "emergency treatment" is not only life-and-death treatment, it is more or less equivalent to "very urgent, high risk of very negative effects if not treated quickly".

I had another useful thought.

My daughter who had eczema as a baby also clawed at her face quite a bit. She always had little scratches all on her face for the first few months and it was easy for her to scratch her face because she had eczema. Anyway the REASON she was scratching her face was because she was very very very constipated. She would clench up hard to try to push it out (gross. i know) and when she clenched her little fists if they were near her face she would scratch the heck out of her face.

It was disturbing, but eventually she stopped doing it when she realized "Ow! hey... thats my own hand or something..."

So, don't know if that helps, but I figured... why not.

When our pediatrician determined my son needed to see a urologist, and knew that it typically takes 2 months to get an appointment, he said to go to the ER, and tell them the pediatrician set us there because there was an infection involved. It wasn't a life-threatening situation, but he knew that was the best route to get help in a timely fashion. It was at a children's hospital, which is also a teaching hospital, so the main ER doctor called the urologist who was on call and my son was seen by a fellow in training.

ER's these days seem to be set up where the walk-in section is really urgent care, but with the ability to also quickly triage and help anyone who is dealing with something life threatening.

With open sores and the level of pain you are describing, it's worth a trip to the ER. Perhaps consider driving to the nearest major city with a Children's hospital. Just be prepared to hang out there all day if there is a long wait.

Please, please, take your baby to a doctor for emergency treatment! I am in the UK, and it seems you're in the US and I do understand that our health systems are very different, but this is a small baby with a serious and painful condition. Take the baby to a doctor for full assessment and treatment.

Relieve the suffering first, then you can try to work out what the causes are, bearing in mind that this may well be a life-long condition that your child has and will have to live with. Eczema is not always caused by allergies. My sister and my father were both born with eczema, and were treated as new-borns with emollient creams to ease the pain and discomfort.

Doctor - please, for immediate pain relief, then take it from there.

My wife called again and got in to the dermatoligist Tuesday. I had jury duty the same day so I don't know what was said and I couldn't ask my questions. We are giving him oatmeal and bleach baths, wet pajama treatment, using steroid cream, and coating him with moisteriser two to three times a day. His head, body and legs are looking much better but his face is still all messed up. The good news is that he is not scratching as long as we keep slathering him with all this goo every few hours. Still using socks on his hands and trapping his arms down inside his sleep sack at night to keep him from rubbing his face and cleaning everything like a mad man. Things are looking up.

hi, I'm glad you were able to get him in to see the doctor. And it sounds like your son is doing somewhat better.

Please keep experimenting in a medium way, like a lot of people have essentially suggested and which sounds like what you're doing. Regarding the oatmeal and bleach baths, I would go pretty dilute on the bleach. Would focusing on keeping his fingernails really short, cutting them several times a week---as if you don't have enough to do with a baby!--- but might that be an appreciable help?