We had a week long battle with hand foot and mouth disease. All of Spring break we spent home trying not to spread it to everyone else. We had to cancel a lot of fun plans. First, Liv got it. At first I wondered if she had strep. She had a fever and her mouth looked so red, but she wasn't complaining that it hurt. Then, i noticed white spots. I did a strep test. It was negative, but I decided to start her on Amoxicillin anyways because I wasn't sure what else could be causing this fever and throat to look like it did. Then, the next morning she started getting red bumps on her hands, feet, bum (it should really be called hand, foot, mouth and bum disease) and the throat started to look more like the sores typical of hand, foot, and mouth. Bummer! Antibiotics won't do anything for that. I was really hoping the boys wouldn't get it. But...
Camden had it a few days later, and then the next day Carter started showing symptoms. They all followed the same pattern. A fever, then two days later bumps and sores at which point they didn't want to eat and screamed in protest if ever they swallowed something when hungry forgetting how bad their throat hurt. The worst thing was that everyone was in the not eating stage on different days, so I felt like I was making double meals for everyone all day long. We would make breakfast, then later smoothies, then lunch, then smoothies...you get the picture. I made a lot of smoothies. Here are the cute boys drinking smoothies.
To top this all off. Thursday afternoon when I'm thoroughly exhausted from dealing with crabby sick kids all week Derek comes home feverish from work. I admit that I literally had no sympathy left for him. He pretty much laid in our room ignored and fevering all night. The next morning, his throat sure looked like strep. I was thinking it would be strep since typically adults don't get hand, foot, and mouth disease and if they do it is generally very mild. He was honestly the sickest I've ever seen him since he had mono 11 years ago when we were dating! I sent him to my office to see Dr. Preston for a strep test, it was negative, but he was started on antibiotics while we waited for the culture. The morning they were going to call us with the culture results he started getting red spots on his hands.
The whole dang house had hand, foot, and mouth. Everyone but me. Everyone felt so bad for my poor sick family, but honestly I just kept thinking what about me? That was the worst! Honestly, once they got past the fever and I put them on mostly a liquid diet they sort of ran around like normal healthy kids with spots. All except Derek that is, he was practically on his death bed!
The good news on the health front is that I took Liv to get retested for her peanut allergy because she had had a few encounters with not reaction and she is officially peanut allergy free! Yay yay yay!
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