hand foot and mouth hell
from my twitter feed this weekend:
glad my kids know how to #share. hand foot & mouth disease shared w/ older brother & both miserable. #matzohballsoup #minttea to the rescue
Since one of the first notes I saw from our new camp this summer politely informed us that one of the kids in machane aleph (thats the little kids who share everything) group came down with hand foot and mouth disease I just hung my head. That would explain why my princess was acting so out of sorts and ill feeling. Turns out she had a pretty mild case that lasted a few days with a few blisters and her swollen lips. And one dramatic instance of bleeding gums toward the end when she was brushing her teeth.
Yael joined me and bubbie for a fancy lunch and a few hours at my office, but she was unable to eat much. So I got her a shake and some yogurt and she still wasn't eating. Other than that she was in pretty good spirits most of the time she was sick and even went to camp the same week she got sick (Friday) so she could have some Tasti-D-lite when the ice cream truck came for a visit.
Not the case with Jonathan. As per his usual sicky self, he got a brutal case of mouth sores that led into some major swelling of his mouth and then a putrid smell emmanated when he would get it open at all.
Finally took him to the dr after a few days (his dr was of course out of the office but we saw a colleague) who suggested that it may be another strain of the virus since his gums were so swollen also and that we could only dull the pain until the thing had a chance to run its course. So he got 2 prescriptions in 2 days of Tylenol with codine [the first got spilled all over the floor by a well-meaning butterfingers who shall remain nameless]
He eventually got severly dehydrated and I made some poor parenting choices in not taking him to get IV fluids when he was too weak to eat/drink or do anything but sleep. When he finally did urinate after several days, it was the color of our beloved iced tea and a few hours later he went all clammy. I knew that the two were connected but it was only in later research (thank you internet medical websites that list scary symptoms and what they might mean) that I discovered that my poor sick kiddo was probably in shock. It's a good thing he was in a bed under a ton of blankets in the middle of the hottest Texas June on record. Poor parenting choice maybe, in that he probably would have benefited from a bunch of IV fluids, but I was too nervous about him becoming a pin cushion at the hospital to take him to the ER or the medical center. When he finally did go back to camp after a week at home, I called to check up on him and was told that there was no nurse on staff, but that they had an ER dr at their disposal [dr d happens to be the father of one of J's classmates so it was all good and he was a pretty happy camper. He lost a lot of weight between not being able to eat or drink anything and what I think may have been a growth spurt as his feet peeled which is usually my sign that he is growing.
In fact, he may have lost almost 20% of his weight, all of his favorite shirts are literally falling off him!
One other thing I did notice was that he was not coughing, not during the day, not at night, not at all
and he did not have any asthma related problems the whole time he was sick, and that he slept much better. He didn't get up every night and roam the house [read end up in my bed] He also had a nasty looking blister on one of his thumbs that is turning into a black blood blister as it is trying to be reabsorbed by the body. And on the other thumb, he had a blister/sore that popped that was on the edge of/under his nail and thank goodness for chlorinated pools, that the finger looks a lot better [I originally thought the infection was so bad that he was gonna lose part or all of his fingernail]
Good note: he hasn't sucked his thumb in almost a month!
Also, my kids who were sick (not the babies thus far) were so kind to their caretakers. They gave a version of the virus to both grandparents in some form or other.
