Erythema Multiforme

You may be asking yourself what is erythema multiforme. Well you can read more about it at wikipedia.com or dozens of other sites but basically in Courtney's case it is a bad reactions to amoxicillin, and that is what we have been dealing with for the last week and probably will continue to for the next week. Hopefully no longer then that. Here is the story. Last Saturday Courtney started breaking out into red spots we thought maybe she was having an allergic reaction to an otter pop(red dye) we let her try. We called the doctor and he said if she was breathing fine we didn't need to worry but to watch her and give her Benadryl. We proceeded in that way. The spots didn't go away completely with the Benadryl but overall see seemed to be happy. Later that night she got a little fussy and she threw up a couple of times. Once again we called the doctor he basically said the same thing as before so we put her to bed and all seemed to be well for the moment. The next morning she was looking quite a bit better and we thought she was doing pretty good. We gave her the last dose of a ten day cycle of amoxicillin, not knowing that was what caused the problem. Within a couple of hours she was miserable. The spots had come back worse and her hands and feet were swollen. They were so bad that if you barely touched her feet or hands she would cry. That was when we decided it was time to see a doctor. We went to the ER, where they actually got us in to see a doctor fairly quickly. At the ER they gave her Benadryl and a steroid to help get the swelling and rash under control. They also ran a urine sample test. After four hours of waiting and testing I was told that she had a severe urinary tract infection and erythema multiforme because of the amoxicillin. They gave her a shot of a different type of antibiotic for the urinary tract infection and after watching to make sure she didn't have bad reaction to it, we were on our way home.
We were surprised about the amoxicillin being the culprit because she had been taking the amoxicillin for 9 days for an ear infection before she had the initial reaction. She had even taken it a couple of months ago for an ear infection and never had a problem. I guess it isn't uncommon for this the happen though.
The first four pictures of the spottiness and the swollen red ankles and feet were taken Sunday after we got home from the ER. She was looking better than she did before we went to the ER. Poor baby.
Throughout the week she has been to see the doctor twice and has been taking Benadryl to sooth the symptoms. All we can really do is is treat the symptoms and wait for it to clear up on its own.
Each day she seems to be getting better. Last night she had a breakout but it was different than the initial one. She had bigger areas of skin that were pink with small raised bumps and a few welts(the last picture shows on her back one of the bigger ones she has had). The breakouts usually don't last very long. Today she has had a couple of breakouts but overall she is looking better every day. We look forward to her not having any more breakouts.
The last three pictures were taken yesterday evening when she had a breakout.
For now she will not be given anymore penicillin type antibiotics. We are grateful it was not more serious and look forward to her being all better.