The Plague

Well, I knew it was bound to happen, but I didn't expect it to be quite so soon or quite so intense. Caleigh entered preschool and she also entered a world of germs that she would not have necessarily otherwise encountered just yet.

It started with a small flare up of her asthma. She would cough and cough and cough and then sometimes cough until she sounded like she was about to spew out a lung (or two). So out came her trusty nebulizer and albuterol and pulmicort. Making her sit still long enough to take a whole treatment has gotten harder as she has gotten older. I used to be able to turn on a favorite show and put her on the couch or in a high chair and she was good to finish the whole treatment. Now, I do good to get her to make it half way through before I have to practically start bribing her to finish it!

Then, on this past Thursday, I picked Caleigh up from school and from her car seat she asks me "What are these dots on my hands?" I look at the tiny palms she is flashing me and see tons of tiny red dots on them. That morning she had made a comment that she had a "headache" when she woke up. Chad and I found this very funny since we didn't think she even knew what a headache was. She promptly told us that a headache is when your head hurts and her head hurt! A little later that afternoon, she tells me her throat now hurts. Ok, time to call the doctor.

By Friday morning when we enter the doctor's office, she has a headache, a sore throat, lesions on the inside of her cheeks and on her tongue, blisters on her palms and soles of her feet, and a smaller rash all over her shoulders and chest. Oh, and she is still coughing. Her lungs were clear but she has strep, a strep rash, and hand foot and mouth disease at the same time.

My normally good little medicine taker does not want to put anything in her mouth, at all. I have convinced her that ice cold water makes her throat feel better so she downs sippy cups full of it throughout the day. Her fever does not want to get itself under control so I am trying to not only force her antibiotic down her but fever reducer as well. Food is something she won't go near and sleeping is her favorite thing to do right now. She is just as pitiful, if not more pitiful, as she was post-tonsillectomy. Her breath is dragon-like and her whine seems to never cease. I can't seem to find the right combination of meds and comfort measures to keep her happy (unless she is sleeping).

She seems to be in a bit of a better mood this morning, although she is bummed we had to skip church. Tomorrow is Monday and she is wanting to go back to school but if that fever returns, she will still be right here with me then as well. She got all these illnesses from someone there and I sure don't want her to be responsible for making some other child catch this plague.