Outbreak

Is it bad that I have temporarily nicknamed my son Outbreak?  Yep, straight from the movie with Dustin Hoffman and Renee Russo in it?  I haven't seen that movie in forever, but regardless I believe it is a fitting nickname.

Why did I nickname him that?  Well, Nathaniel woke up on Thurs and was 1 million degrees.  Seriously, I think it was around a million.  He was a little ball of fire.  We immediately knew we had to take his temperature.  This was the first time he has had a fever so I was running around looking for the thermometer.  We tried our ear therm.  Then we tried the digital regular therm under the arm.  They were both reading somewhere in the neighborhood of 101-102.  Uh-oh.  He is hot.  What to do next.  HHHmmmm.  

Having never had a kid with a fever I decided to procrastinate deciding what to do and just complain about our lame thermometers.  Our thermometers really aren't great.  They were good enough to determine something was off though.  I ran out later in the day and got a better one.  Nothing too special, but at least I know when it is reading and when it is done.  Sadly, my other 2 were less conclusive on that front.

Ok, so after complaining and Kevin zoning me out.  We decided to just let him rest and see what happened.  If he got hotter or showed any more symptoms I'd worry more then.  So it became a day of trying to get him to drink some fluids and just relax by my side.  It wasn't hard to get him to relax he was pretty out of it.  He just laid there and looked at books or watched shows.  Ok, honestly, it was mostly watching shows haha.

His temperature stayed the same pretty much all day and besides him having zero appetite nothing else really looked wrong.  So I waited some more.  That evening Kevin gave him a lukewarm bath and off to bed he went.  

Oh I forgot, we did give him 3 doses of Tylenol to help with the whines and fever.  We hadn't ever used the Tylenol and it was expired.  I was happy on one hand that we hadn't had to use it, but bummed on the other since it was expired and I wanted to use it.  After getting some new medicine we were all set.  It did seem to help.  He even ate a little after having one dose.  I have learned that I have mixed opinions about lowering a fever and need to do some more research.  I know fevers are good since it means your immune system is doing its job and you don't want to interfere with that unless you have too.  *have too* meaning too high of a fever or other aches that just need some soothing.  Nathaniel just had the fever and a few whines so I wasn't sure I wanted to lower his fever because maybe it was doing its thing.  What I learned is that it is possible the tylenol works through a different mechanism than the immune system thus not interfering with the immune's system's ability to operate.  Like I said I'll have to research that little tidbit further for my own curiosity's sake.  Is that interesting or am I just a geek?  Hhhhmmm

Ok, back to how my little Outbreak was doing the next morning.  He woke up with no fever.  His fever had broke.  Yippee.  He was still a little sluggish and lacking an appetite, but better.  About halfway through the day he started to show signs.  Signs of an outbreak.  AAAHHHH my little one has spots.  All over.  Uh-Oh.  Off to google I went.

I decided to channel my inner 'House' (the tv show) and write the symptoms on a white board in my head.  1) A fever that broke 2) Acting pretty normal 3) Spots 4) Spots that don't seem to itch or be bothersome 5) Spots (did I already write that one) 6) light appetite and 7) no other symptoms.  

Beep, boop, beep (that is the computer working) boop beep.  What I self diagnosed him as having was 'Roseola'.  The only contradictory part was that usually kids with Roseola have a fever for several days.  I took him to the pediatrician's office on Sat. just to be sure it wasn't some rash I should be worried about, plus he still had a light appetite and seemed a little irritable.  I figured I better double check.  Roseola confirmed!  Apparently by the time they show spots they supposedly aren't contagious.  Which is bad news for all the kids at the library on Tues when we were there.  Whoops.  I guess it is most contagious when kids don't show any signs, which is why it gets spread at daycare pretty easy.  

The good news. Yep, there is good news.  One is that he hardly played with anything at the library hopefully not spreading germs that widely.  And two you are immune to it after you have it once, which is why adults and most kids don't get it very often since most everyone gets it before the age of 2.  I guess some kids can get it and not even know it because they don't break out in a rash.  Who knows.  All I do know is that he looks like Outbreak right now, poor kid.  People are probably trying to stay away from us in the stores.  Maybe I need some biohazard tape to wrap around his head haha.  I know my germaphobe self and I'd be avoiding us if I saw us.  ;)