Hand, Foot & Mouth...YUCK!

I got a call from the daycare on Wednesday morning, and I honestly was expecting it to be about Anna.  But, I was wrong!  Claire had a fever and was not acting like herself.  I took care of a few things at school before leaving to get both girls.  Claire was certainly not her chipper self!  I gave her some tylenol and put her to bed for a nap, but she seemed to rebound ok after nap and was happy and playing on her own.

Later that evening, before it was time to give her any more medicine, her temperature rose to 103.4...yikes!  She was pretty miserable.  We did a bath, gave her more meds, and put her to bed.  We had already decided that Jeff would stay home on Thursday with her.  I got a text from the daycare director that one of Claire's classmates was diagnosed that day with Hand, Foot & Mouth, so she suggested I be on the look out for signs of that.  I did notice some spots/sores inside her mouth, and she wasn't too excited about eating or drinking (probably because her throat hurt) but wasn't sure what to make of it.  She definitely needed Thursday off, because Jeff said she laid around for much of the day, and he also started to notice spots/sores breaking out around her mouth.  

There is nothing the doctor can give kids that have this virus.  Just over the counter meds to keep them comfortable or keep their fever down.  Poor Claire had to be miserable!  I sent Anna to daycare to try to keep her away from the germs, and it seems to have worked, because she didn't get sick.  Praise the Lord!

The crazy part about all this is that 9 kids in Claire's class were out sick with this!  It's super contagious, so I'm not surprised!  She seems to be back to 100%, although we did take it easy this weekend, and kept her home from church, because I heard varying reports of how long a child can still be contagious.  Having sick little ones is no fun!

Hope you had a good weekend!