Roseola

You can add another childhood illness to Noah's list--he had Roseola last week. Kids with Roseola typically have a high fever for several days with no other symptoms, then when the fever finally breaks they get a fine pinpoint red rash. Noah started with fever on Tuesday-no other symptoms. Becuase we were planning to go to Angleton for Kristi's shower, I went ahead and took him into the doctor in case it was something we could start treatment for in order to have him better in time for our trip.

At the doctor's office, we ran down the list of possibilities. Amazingly, his ears were completely clear (with Noah's history with his ears that's always my first concern). Lungs were clear. He had a little bit of white at the back of his throat so we did a strep test which was negative (Noah of course hated being held down to have a swab stuck in the back of his throat). Hmmm. Of course, all this coincided with the beginning of the Swine Flu outbreak so we had to address that as well. No, we hadn't recently traveled to Mexico or been around anyone with the flu-but wait, Mommy works with lots of people that may have traveled or been around others that traveled to Mexico (Del Valle, where my clinic is, is a largely Hispanic population and families frequently go back and forth to Mexico). Poor Noah started crying when the nurse came back in the room to do the flu test (he remembered her from the strep test)-flu test is a swab up the nose...even bigger fun than the strep test! Thankfully that came back negative as well.

So, basically that left us with a likely mysterious viral illness. Nothing we can do for it-just keep him comfortable and hydrated with the fever and wait for it to pass. I talked with the doctor about the possibility of Roseola since he had no other symptoms and he thought that was a good possibility. He said if it's just a cold, he'll probably start with a runny nose and/or cough in the next 24 hours or so. He said if he went more than another 24 hours with no other symptoms besides fever, Roseola would be more and more likely.

Well, Tuesday-just fever...Wed-fever...Thurs-fever...Fri-fever. Saturday morning he woke up for the first day with no fever! His temp went up just a little later that morning but stayed mostly normal. Sure enough, by Saturday night, I started to see a few little red spots that I suspected were the start of his Roseola rash. By Sunday, it was full blown:

Despite how unhappy he looks in these pictures, he was actually doing tons better by the time the rash came. He really was a trooper through the whole thing. Ibuprofen helped with the fever and he was more fussy and clingy when his fever was up, but the rest of the time he was his happy normal self. The rash didn't bother him at all-it's not itchy or painful-just there. It was completely gone by the next Tuesday (so only lasted 2-3 days). We all were able to have a great time at Kristi's shower and were so glad that in spite of being sick, everone got to enjoy Noah too!