Urticaria

Emily came home from school yesterday and I discovered a very pink rash-looking mark on her chest. Upon further investigation, I found it sprinkled over her shoulders, across the bridge of her back, and very lightly down her sides. I assumed it was just from the sweater she was wearing, even though she'd worn it before with no issues. She put a t-shirt on and went about her business. I checked her out about two hours later and was VERY startled to discover that the rash was now BRIGHT RED and spreading, and was very warm to the touch. Now it was THICKLY spread across her chest, fully covering her shoulders and the bridge of her back, spreading down the undersides of her arm from her armpits, much more thickly down her sides and belly, and then we discovered it was pretty heavy where her legs join her body. I immediately called the on-call doctor who said it sounded like hives and that we should give her some liquid Benedryl, and watch her for lip/tongue swelling and difficulty breathing. I checked on her around 11:30pm after the Benedryl had had some time to work and discovered that the red patches had faded significantly, but were still visible, but now she had red speckles up her neck and on her cheeks and ears. It was too soon to give her more Benedryl at that point, but I checked her lips and tongue carefully and sat by her for a few minutes to make sure her breathing was okay. Dan gave her Benedryl at 4am when he got up for work and when she woke up at 8:30am, she looked pretty much totally normal. We'd already made the decision to keep her home today just in case it was something contagious, so I just let her sleep as long as she wanted. She was a totally new kid, very rested and energized and ate two bowls of cereal and drank three glasses of milk!! I was debating just taking her to school afterall (arriving about an hour late) when I noticed her face was starting to turn pink. In the amount of time it took me to finish changing the baby's diaper, Em's face got worse and much brighter red. I called the dotor's office and got an appointment with a doctor we'd never had before (ours was booked up for the day already). She immediately called it Urticaria (I made her write it down for me, so I wouldn't forget), which I discovered is HIVES once I came home and googled the word. LOL She said we'll probably never know what set off the reaction. She gave me the option of either waiting to see if it ever happens again, or going ahead and treating her for allergies now. She said the downside to waiting is that the more reactions they have, the worse the reactions generally are, and the harder they are to treat. She pointed out several rough patches of skin on the back's of Em's arms, legs, and on her belly and said those are classic signs of someone who is prone to skin reactive allergies (not her exact wording but that was my understanding of it in a nutshell) and she was very surprised Emily's never had Urticaria before (it's kind of fun using the fancy word! LOL). SO, now I have to decide if I really should start medicating my child daily, based on ONE incident, or wait. My initial reaction is to WAIT, but I would feel really horrible if this happens to her again and could have been avoided by a daily medicine (Allegra in liquid form twice a day). I'm very undecided. Either way, I felt really bad for Emily. It can't have been comfortable to be covered in a hot red rash like she was. I tried to take pictures, but the lighting just wasn't right no matter what I tried and no flash didn't show the redness and using the flash washed it out. OY! Oh, and we missed school for nothing today! At least I know it's safe to take her to dance class tonight. She cried this morning when I told her she probably couldn't go to dance either.