Adventures with Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease

I feel like it's safe to say that toddlers are human petri dishes in that you never know what they're going to culture next.

All last week daycare had given us the head's up that three different children had contracted Hand-Foot-and-Mouth disease, and with its 7-day incubation period we should really keep an eye on Samma.

Sure enough, yesterday morning she woke up (late, I might add) with a 102.9° temperature and a dismal temperament. Ibuprofen and snugs were on the agenda.

We are fortunate that we have a pediatrician's office that opens on Sundays for sick appointments, but the unfortunate part was that we needed to wait until 11am for them to open before being able to make an appointment to come in. We won't talk about the battle it took to just get in touch with the answering service, and finally getting a call back after 11:30am... but we did get an appointment for 12:45pm, so there was some relief in sight.

Luckily Samma had fallen asleep around 11am and I had to wake her up to get her into the car for the appointment... but by that time, the ibuprofen I gave her at 7am had worn off, and the poor thing was spiking a fever again. A 104.0° temp to be exact, with an immediate dosage of Tylenol once we were in the examination room. 20 minutes later that fever dropped to 103.1° so at least the medicine was working.

After a thorough examination, a throat culture, and 2 Pedialyte freezepops later, strep throat was ruled out and it was officially confirmed that Samma had Hand-Foot-and-Mouth disease as we believed. We were instructed to strictly monitor the fever for the next 24-48 hours, alternating between Tylenol and Ibuprofen every 3 hours, as needed. If the fever hadn't broken after 48 hours, we were to come back for a recheck, and once it had broken it would be another 24-hour before she could go back to daycare.

So for those unaware, which included me up until yesterday, HFM is a childhood virus more common in the summer and fall months that causes sores in the mouth and on the hands, feet, and sometimes the buttocks and legs. It usually outbreaks in daycares and kindergartens where bodily fluids exchange quite easily, and luckily it doesn't last longer than a week. (Thanks, WebMD!)

Since it's viral, we can't do anything for her other than let it run its course and keep her as comfy as possible. She was having a hard time sleeping last night so we let her sleep with us... it has totally confirmed my personal beliefs regarding co-sleeping, but we'll save that for another post.

The fever came back at 100.3° around 8am so we're working on another dosage of Tylenol for the time being... finger's crossed that we have an easy and relaxing day, full of snugs and naps...