Thursday, July 28, 2011

We had Roseola

So one pediatric appointment, a Metabolic appointment, a scary fever, sleepless nights, and lots of fussiness later, we have confirmation: Cupcake has/had Roseola.

This is what our regular pediatrician suspected from the beginning, but we wouldn't know for sure until she got the tell tale rash.  By yesterday her fever was gone, and this morning she woke up with a gentle red covering on her skin.  I've never been so glad to see a weird rash, because now it means that it's over.  Done.  Fever broke, the rash should not be painful, and she's no longer contagious.  We can go back to our regular programming.

Though we did learn a lot from the experience.  Cupcake actually started refusing food for a whole day, going so far as to violently swat away anything we'd try to offer her. This was new for us, and left us at a loss of what to do.  Somehow she managed to eat some snacks here and there and drink a bit of breast milk at just the right times, so we avoided any type of crisis, metabolic or otherwise.  Even non FaOD children need to eat and hydrate if they're feverish.    

I will go into more detail about our metabolic appointment, as that deserves its own post, and our new found frustrations and opinions about L-carnitine (in short, we're not fans of carnitine at the moment).  In the meantime, we will rejoice that Cupcake did not have Coxsackie, a virus that still terrifies me and is probably lurking in the playground shadows.

3 comments:

  1. So glad her fever broke! I'm not looking forward to DD's first illness at all! I have 3 different kinds of thermometers, 2 types of fever reducers and plenty of polycose/pedialyte on hand. Has your metabolic doctor prescribed polycose? our metabolic dietician says that 4 month old DD can go a full 2-3 days on just polycose (mixed with pedialyte...3-6 oz given every 2-3 hours) when she has a fever and isn't wanting to eat. God knows I hate eating when I have a fever...just want to lie in bed all day!

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  2. Thank you for your thoughts! :)

    And when your DD gets sick, you're all ready. Sicknesses are scary, even for normal metabolic kids. It's just so hard to not know how to help them.

    We have not been given polycose, just were told to breastfeed/feed solids throughout the day every two hours. Though our doctor did say that we should give juice/gatorade if she refused to eat anything else. And, on a side note, we like ibuprofen/motrin better than acetaminophen/tylenol (for babies older than 6 months, btw), it seemed to work better for her fever.

    The good news is that babies bounce back from illnesses much faster than we do, for the most part. Though they look pitifully miserable in the process.

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  3. Would you be so kind and share with us Cupcake's exact age by the time she had Roseola? Almost all children get it before 2 years, so I assume from the photo that she was between 15-20 months-old. Is this right? :)

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