Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The Sick Door

You may recall that I recently alluded to a less-than-perfect outcome from our holiday party at Reid's school.  We combined classrooms 1 & 3 for our holiday celebration, and with one exception it was a huge success.  The one exception:  hand, foot and mouth disease.  Hand, foot and mouth disease is a common viral infection usually affecting infants and children under 5 years old.

Our party was on Friday afternoon, and by Sunday afternoon Jeff and I noticed a red rash on Reid's extremities - mostly his arms and legs at first.  Then by Sunday night it spread to his hands, feet and chin.  Fortunately, he was showing no signs of distress, so we decided to wait until Monday morning to contact our pediatrician. Thankfully, the ped's office opens at 7:30am, so by 7:31am we were confirmed for an 8:30am appointment. Unlike our well baby visits, we entered the ped's office through the SICK door. Our pediatrician's group has separate waiting rooms for well and sick visits, and this was our first voyage through the sick door.

Dr. K did a thorough examination of Reid and due to the fact that the rash was showing up in some areas that are atypical of HFMD, she wasn't quite sure what to call it. She decided to seek out a 2nd opinion, so she asked Reid's actual pediatrician, Dr. S, to stop by our exam room to take a look.  Dr. S agreed that it was in fact, a viral infection, but he didn't want to label it HFMD either.  Evidently, there are various strains of the disease all in the Coxsackievirus group.  Fortunately the rash was R's only symptom.  He didn't have the other typical symptoms such as fever and blister-like sores in the mouth and throat (but some of his classmates did). Apparently, the throat and mouth sores can cause babies the most distress, so mom was extremely grateful that we didn't have to contend with that.  As Dr. S indicated, the rash got worse before it got better, but by Thursday it was starting to subside. Now (Dec. 27th) it's almost completely healed.

And thus marks our first official illness {thank you, day care}.
      






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1 comment:

Grandma DeeDee said...

Even with the rash he's still the cutest baby around. Hugs and Kisses.