POOR BABY

My poor sweet baby is covered in a mystery rash. On November 19th Alivia woke up with an ear full of sticky, yucky goo. I took her to the doctor & found out that her ear drum had burst (ouch). She was put on an antibiotic for 10 days. On the very last day of this treatment she broke out with a mild rash on her back & belly. I totally blew it off, not thinking it was a big deal at all. About 4 or 5 days later I took Alivia in for her 6 month well child visit. Her ears were still red but we opted not to put her on another dose of antibiotics so soon. The rash did concern her doctor though. She immediately ran her down to see the other doctor in the office. They both confirmed that it was probably 1 of 3 things; an allergic reaction to the antibiotic, eczema, or yeast. They told me to get some hydrocortizone & monistat to apply to the affected areas. So I did but her rash wasn't getting better. In fact, it was getting much worse. Her doctor wanted me to bring her back by in about a week to check on things, so I did. Alivia was actually seen that day by another doctor (3rd doctor). He told me to try some benedryl creme if in fact it was an allergic reaction. He also checked her ears that day & decided to try another round of antibiotics because her ears were still pretty red, this one being a 5 day dose. So I did that, but her little rash was now a BIG rash. Just over a week ago I took her back to see the 3rd doctor again & he gave me a couple of prescriptions. Neither of them worked at all. Finally I decided to get her an appointment with Ainsley & Addison's pediatrician (something I should have done in the first place). He was baffled!! He said it was hard to make a proper diagnosis mostly because we had tried so many different treatments & nothing was working. He wasn't sure if something could have been working at some point & if something else aggravated it at the same time, so we did a bunch of things. First, he scraped parts of her rash with a scalpel (yes, I did say scalpel) & put them on a slide to look at with a microscope. Second, he swabbed her rash to do some lab testing. Third, he took her blood to get a CBC level & a zinc level. WHAT THE... The zinc level was taken to see if she may have a zinc deficiency, the scraping & swabbing was to try to determine what the heck we are working with, & the CBC level was just a precaution. So for right now we are treating her BIG, GIANT, HORRIBLE RASH as extreme eczema with a bacterial infection. If things don't clear up within 2 weeks, he is sending her to Salt Lake to see a pediatric dermatologist. He also mentioned it could be a bunch of "weird, crazy things". Nice! We are hoping for extreme eczema at this point. My poor sweet (chubby) baby!!!