difficult child has a wierd rash

klmno

Active Member
This is a rash like I have never seen. He said he just got it tonight- he just showed it to me as I checked on him going to bed and he had just gotten out of the shower. It is on his upper back, between shoulder blades and tapering like a triangle toward the center of his back. The "bumps" are different sizes- like if you saw soap bubbles, but not that big. It is red in color for the entire area but has these different sized bumps, differently spaced, throughout the area. If you only saw one bump, it would look like a mosquito bite, but there are way too many for that.

He has been taking 1 mg/day of risperdal for only about 2 weeks. He has been on lithobid and depakote er for quite some time. He swears to me that he has been taking medications as prescribed, and only as prescribed, for at least a week.

We haven't changed soaps, detergents, or anything else.

Does anyone know what this could be? He has a physical scheduled for tomorrow, but I am a little worried because I've never seen anything like this. He says it itches like crazy. Is there a website that shows different patterns/types of rashes in photos?

Oh- he used to get eczema- it isn't that because I would recognize it and it is a "drier" look.
 

Sara PA

New Member
If you are worrying about Stevens-Johnson, the rash you can get from medications, here's a link to pictures of the early stages. As far as I know, it starts out in one area and spreads, it doesn't appear on the whole body at once but I could be wrong.
 

witzend

Well-Known Member
Strep is going around pretty severely - and off season - here. It can come with a rash that starts on the back, but usually in the trunk area.
 

klmno

Active Member
I thought Stevens-Johnson came with lamictol- but he has tried several MS- am I mistaken?

He hasn't had any symptoms of strep- but I'll ask the dr's tomorrow. He has a tendency to catch strep pretty easily and once he had it and never had a fever with it, so maybe it could be the problem.

Thank you, Ladies!
 

Sara PA

New Member
You can get Stevens-Johnson from any medication. The Stevens-Johnson Foundation site refers to a case caused by Tylenol. Many, many drugs of all classes have warnings about Stevens-Johnson specifically or about a rash for which you should immediately contact your doctor. The anticonvulsants as a class have a slightly higher rate of S-J than a lot of other drugs. It was initially thought that Lamictal had a higher rate than the other anticonvulsants but as it turned out, it probably doesn't. Anticonvulsants are initially tested with another anticonvulsant in place. It seems that it's the combination of Lamictal and Depakote that was the cause of the initial cases which led to the warnings. That and starting doses that were too high. I've heard of more people getting S-J from Trileptal than from Lamictal. I think Dilantin is the worse.
 

klmno

Active Member
It doesn't really look like the rash in that photo link. Would this be an emergency if it was this rash? (As in- ER tonight) Can I expect the pediatrician to be familiar with this, if that is what it is?
 

Sara PA

New Member
If you ever think you or someone in your family has Stevens-Johnson, go to the ER and demand that someone familiar with S-J examine you.

I would ask a pediatrician if he was familiar with S-J.
 

crazymama30

Active Member
with SJ I am told the person will feel ill and run a fever, at one time we thought difficult child had this. It was hives.
 

Steely

Active Member
Staph infection? It can start anywhere in the body, just by one skin blip getting infected with the staph, and then it spreads. My son has had this twice.

Let us know what doctor says.
 
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