Sounds Worse Than It Is!

When I left Emily at Gateway Monday morning, she waved and said bye-bye like everything was fine. I didn't even make it to work before her teacher called and said she had a 101.3 fever and a rash that looked like hand, foot and mouth disease!

She had what we thought was a diaper rash with little bumps on Friday afternoon when we got home, but they looked much better by Sunday. She has also been having a tough time with one of her molars coming in on the left side--her gums have bled a little and she didn't want to eat much. We attributed all of this to teething and didn't think much else of it.

I u-turned and went back to Gateway to pick her up, and called to make her an appointment with the doctor on the way. We saw the doctor at 10:15, and she confirmed that Emily had hand, foot and mouth disease. It sounds completely disgusting, but they should really come up with a different name, because there wasn't much to it. The doctor said it's very contagious and that most kids will get it at some point--there are rarely any complications, and there's no treatment--it just goes away on its own after 5-7 days. Since she had the bumps on Friday, we know we're at least in day 4 already.

So Emily and I stayed home on Monday--she was a little grumpy, but still wanted to play and do most of her normal things. She seems to really like these new puzzles we got this weekend, and is very good at matching the pieces!

I decided to keep her home again Tuesday morning, but by lunch time, she was feeling much better and hadn't had a fever in 24 hours, so I took her to school.

She had a great afternoon and seemed to be back to 100% tonight! Luckily, this apparently works a little like chicken pox, so she should be immune to it if it goes around again!