Hand Foot & Mouth Desease

For those of you without young children, no, Hand Foot & Mouth disease is not a livestock disease.  It is in fact much like chicken pox, an annoying itchy rash virus. There is no drug to make it go away, you just have to wait it out.  It is  mostly passed between children under the age of 5 and due to chickenpox now having a vaccine, is more common.  It turns out it runs pretty rampant in daycare's especially in the baby rooms where kids drool on everything as its passed through bodily fluid contact.  And yes not only can they get it more then once as there are different strains of the virus but adults, much to my horror can catch it too.  So the Sunday before last, Kail came down with a low grade fervor.  This has been happening off and on due to his teeth coming in, so Jordan and I didn't think much of it.  He also go fussier then normal, again we thought teething.  Monday he got his first diaper rash . .. OK normal for a baby starting solid foods.  Then Tuesday night we were bathing him and found what we thought were bug bites on his hands and a rash on his legs.  So at this point we are thinking bug bites or food allergy as I had just started mangoes.  Jordan even mentioned chicken pox which I of course laughed off . . . ya OK I should stop doing that. 

So the next day I go into daycare and again as I'm a first timer and they have seen everything I ask the director if she thinks its a food allergy.  And that  is when everything hit the fan.  "No that is not a food allergy, that is Hand Foot & Mouth, he has to leave right now and can't come back until they are scabbed over."  "well how long is that usually?" I ask starting to panic.  "Could be a couple of days to a couple of weeks, depends on the kid, the fervor this weekend, and butt rash were all things leading up to this, give him lots of Tylenol as he is going to be in a lot of pain" . . . . and out the door I go. 

Well so now what am I going to do, biggest problem is that this is VERY contagious as he has no teeth and slobbers on EVERYTHING.  And he cant be around other kids so my backups are out.  So for the next three days Jordan and I traded off staying home.  The funny thing was he was perfectly happy the entire time.



In fact he was so happy I actually took him to the Dr to make sure he had this "terribly painful virus".  the Dr confirmed it and also said it was very unusual for a kid to be so happy with it.  Kail likes his Dr a lot and will often give him a huge grin as soon as Adam walks in the door. 

Luckily Kail had a very minor outbreak with only a few blisters on each hand and foot and only two in the back of his throat which I think were the ones that hurt the most because he had to eat.  He was all scabbed up and back at daycare on Monday.

His mom on the other hand got it after she thought she was out of the incubation stage (huge and many apologizes to my family who I unintentionally was around probably while I was contagious. On the up side I don't slobber like Kail does) and ended up having what the InstaCare doctor said was a "sever allergic reaction" to the virus.  Something about having a hyper active immune system. I wasn't paying all that much attention, I just wanted the massive disfiguring  hives that covered me from head to foot to stop inching like a million bee stings. Needles to say Kail was much braver and handled it a lot better then his mom did.

Kails Rash:

Mom's Rash: