Hand, Foot & Mouth

As I mentioned in a previous post, I drove down to Hot Springs on Thursday, 5/26 for an interview.  It was a quick overnight trip and I drove back home on Friday.  We were planning a trip to Tulsa to see Jan & Bill for Memorial Day weekend.  I was on the phone talking to my mom – almost to Fayetteville – when I got an incoming call from a number I didn’t recognize.  I let it go to voicemail.  When I got off the phone with Mom, I checked the message.  It was the kids’ daycare.  Nola was running a fever of 101.9 and they needed someone to come get her.  Ugh…

By this time I was in Fayetteville, so I called Rudy and told him that I would pick the kids up up & meet him at home.  My plan was to bring Caleb home and then take Nola to convenient care.  The boys packed and left for Tulsa while I took Nola to Wellquest.  There was a 2 1/2 hour wait, so I decided to try out the new walk-in clinic in town.  Lo and behold – we were the only people there.  (Seriously, the doctor was playing solitaire when we walked past him on our way to the exam room.)  I figured that was either because they were brand new and people didn’t know about them yet or they were awful.  Either way, I needed someone to take a look at Nola and find out why she had spiked a fever.  I suspected hand, foot & mouth virus because we had some friends over for dinner the week before and their daughter started showing symptoms 2 days later.  I mentioned it to the doctor, but he didn’t see anything to base the diagnosis on.  He looked in her mouth and her throat was a mess.  Strep swab was negative, but there was no way her throat felt good.  He called it a bacterial infection, prescribed good ol’ amoxicillin and sent us on our way. 

I started her on the amoxicillin that night.  She obviously didn’t feel well.  The fever hung on through the night, but was much lower the next morning.  We spent Saturday snuggled up in the big chair in the living room.  She napped on my chest while I watched more TV than I’ve watched in months.
She still felt pretty miserable, but the fever gradually went away.  By mid-afternoon, red spots were starting to show up on her body.  By 5:30, they were turning into blisters.  Yep, she definitely had it.  Full-blown hand, foot & mouth. 

The worst blisters were on her left thumb – the one that she sucks.  Our pediatrician had told me previously that our best bet for her to stop thumb-sucking was to contract HFM.  Secretly, I was kind of giddy about the idea of that working.   Not that I wanted her to have to suffer the awfulness of HFM, but I was really hoping there would be a good payoff in the end.

By bedtime, she was miserable.   By 12:30, I gave up and put her in bed with me.  Neither of us got much sleep.  The worst part of HFM is that there is absolutely no medicine for it.  It’s viral & just has to run its course.  I gave her tylenol for the pain, but it didn’t seem to help. 

On Sunday, we went back to convenient care.  This time, I went to Mercy.  We waited and waited and waited to see a doctor.  Nola wore her sunglasses in the waiting room so she could be incognito.  She would’ve been mortified if any of the kids from her class had seen her with those blisters on her hands and face! 

 

Once we finally got back to the room, we waited a while longer for the doctor.  Nola was tired.  It was naptime.  She really didn’t want anything to do with that room or me for that matter.  She screamed and screamed and threw a tantrum like I haven’t ever seen her throw.  I’m pretty sure it all started because I told her she couldn’t put her diaper bag in the medical waste trash can.  Eventually, the doctor came in.  She took a look at Nola’s blisters, listened to the information that I shared and said, “Yeah, she has a really bad case of HFM. Really bad.”  She took her off the amoxicillin & said to just ride it out.  I asked about returning to daycare and she wrote a note saying she could go back when she was 24 hours fever-free and eating/drinking normally.  Well, we were already at both of those milestones, so technically she was in the clear. 

We went home & both of us took a much-needed nap.  After nap, we played and watched some more TV.  She was obviously feeling better as long as the tylenol was controlling her pain.  She even discovered her bellybutton.  (She’s now obsessed with bellybuttons.  If you’re around her, I highly recommend tucking in your shirt.)

This is what Nola’s thumb looked like by Sunday night.  Heartbreaking.  It was about 50% larger than the other one and the blisters were so large that you couldn’t really tell where one stopped and the next one started.  They were beginning to break and become open sores.  It was not fun.

The boys came home on Monday and we made the decision that Nola could not go back to daycare on Tuesday after the Memorial Day break.  My mom offered to come up and keep her.  We were concerned about sending her out with open sores that couldn’t be bandaged.  She could get any kind of infection in those sores and we couldn’t stomach the thought.  So, Mom kept her home Tuesday and Wednesday. 

On Wednesday night, I did something I never thought I’d do.  I gave Nola a pacifier.  She was having such a hard time sleeping because she wanted to suck her thumb, but it hurt.  I remembered that I happened to have 2 pacifiers in the cabinet, so I gave her one.  After a few seconds, she calmed herself right down and went to sleep.  A lightbulb went off in my mind!  Maybe…just maybe, she would take to the pacifier and stop sucking her thumb after all.  Then, once I knew she didn’t miss that thumb anymore, I could instate paci rehab and we’d be done with it all!  My evil plan was foiled.  The paci served its purpose for one night.  As I type this, Nola is in her bed, sound asleep, thumb firmly planted in her mouth.    Can’t say I didn’t try!

She still had her boo-boo on Thursday (and was quite happy to show it to everyone who would look at it).  She really liked for people to blow on it and then she would try to do the same, but usually ended up blowing a raspberry at it.  Mom offered to take her home with her for the weekend.  As much as I hated to be away from her for that long, I decided it was for the best.  So, they packed up and headed for Hot Springs on Thursday morning.  Mom reported frequently on her improvement and Nola had a blast being the center of attention at LaLa’s house. 

We met Mom and Mr L in Ft. Smith on Sunday for lunch and brought Nola home with us.  We were so glad to have her home, but most of all we were glad to see HFM go away!