I would love to tell you that I had some fantastic reason why I have been absent from here, but that just wouldn’t be true.  We have had a busy summer, working in the garden, hosting family and friends, but my latest distractions was little ones not feeling well.

My children started with cold symptoms, and then ran a low-grade fever.  Next the spots came.  Samuel was the first to start with it and he had it the worst and was quite miserable for a few days.

He had them on his feet…

On his hands….

His diaper area…

and his face…

Samuel had them the worst around his mouth, hands, feet, diaper area, and then it spread up the legs and up the arms.  He had a few small ones on his eye lid and ears and just one or two tiny ones on his back and tummy.  Nothing on the scalp.  Poor little guys feet got so bad he could hardly walk.

Joel’s oncology doctors still like to know what he is exposed to so I wanted to take Samuel to the doctor.  Unfortunately, our doctor was away so that meant I had to take him to emerge.  The doctor there took one look at his legs and said, “Poison ivy.”   I guess the look on my face said enough as he said something like,
“Has he been in tall grass?”
I shook my head, “No I can’t think of anywhere he could have been exposed to poison ivy.”  I mentioned that his face around his mouth was bad so he pulled out his soother.
“That’s an infection, he has a skin infection!  He is going to need antibiotics to clear that up.”  I asked if it was contagious. “No it is a bacterial infection of some sort but he isn’t contagious.”  Hating to put him on a med I took the prescription and headed home.

Only to arrive home and find Joel with a very few spots, but nonetheless spots.   Hmm seems contagious,  Joel had just finished with the fever and Hannah was starting with one.  I decided to take all 3 children back the next day as clearly something was catchy.

As you can see Joel was a much milder case, and Hannah ended up having even fewer than Joel.

The doctor the next day came in looked at Samuel and said,
“Are they vaccinated?”
“No…”
“It’s chicken pox, they are not vaccinated, it is chicken pox!”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“100% Chicken pox.”
“But Joel only has them on his hands, foot and mouth, are you sure it isn’t hand foot and…”
“Madam, 100% chicken pox look at the pox, see that tiny dark spot in the middle of the pox it is 100% chicken pox, you didn’t vaccinate, it is chicken pox.”
“But he doesn’t have any on his torso???”
“They will come, you’ll see, it isn’t uncommon to start in the extremities you’ll see.”

I felt more confused than ever. I guess I wanted him to say hand foot and mouth disease because that is what made the most sense to me.  No more spots appeared, none of the children ended up with any spots on their torsos. If it was the chicken pox it was the strangest case I have ever seen. Most of Samuel’s spots did scab over, but Hannah and Joel’s spots just faded away. So what do you think chicken pox, hand foot and Mouth disease, or did they have two different things?? I’d love to hear your opinions.