My daughter is on steroids. No, she isn't working out or on her way to drug rehab. She's been prescribed Prednisone for a horrid allergic reaction.

She's only nine months old, and she's so far saddled with a million food allergies. As I've mentioned in previous posts, she can only pretty much eat green beans and hypoallergenic formula. Unfortunately, on Sunday night she ingested three or four small bites of my birthday cake, which was specially-made so that my allergic son could have some. Unfortunately for my
daughter, my son can have milk but she can't. The baby managed to consume a few drops of milk that was baked into the cake. What harm could a few drops do, right?

Plenty! The hives started that night with just two but they multipled during the week. We headed to the allergist and came home with a Benedryl-like drug. That medicine reduced the severity and itching, but her body just kept on attacking, making more (but smaller) hives. So today, we brought in the big guns in the form of steroids.

I worked as a drug abuse prevention specialist for a few years, so I know that these types of steroids that are prescribed for allergies are not anabolic - they won't make her the world's strongest nine-month-old and she won't need drug addiction help. They shouldn't give her "Roid Rage" or anything. But it's still scary. I almost feel like, you know, she's not even walking yet and we're using steroids, where do we have left to go from here? Epipens for the allergic reaction and drug treatment centers for the addiction? OK, I'm kidding (about the treatment centers... we already have the Epipens just in case).

I'm lucky that I haven't experienced any really serious addictions in my life. I have cravings for dark chocolate, brown sugar, and cookie dough ice cream, but that's not the same and I know it. I do have people in my family with addictions. I won't forget that and I do err on the side of caution because I know these things can be hereditary. I hope my daughter will too, when she gets old enough to understand. Right now, I mostly just hope that we can find more food that she can eat and that she won't have to endure another four or five days of broken sleep, reduced appetite, and general discomfort simply because she took a few bites of the world's most benign birthday cake.