A Plague Upon Our House

Have I mentioned how odd I find little kid illnesses? Because even if I have, I think it bears repeating. I mean, adults get sick with a cold. Maybe the flu. Maybe strep throat. Kids? Kids get all kinds of nonsense. Sure, there's the cold/flu/strep thing. And then, there's the weird high fever followed by some kind of skin issue thing--hand, foot, and mouth disease, roseola, chicken pox, etc. And then, there are the ubiquitous ear infections. And then, lurking in the back of your mind and making you wonder if maybe you're just turning into a hypochondriac-by-proxy, there's the all-encompassing "teething."

So a couple of days ago, Luke came down with a fever. McMoose and I looked at each other and said, "Oh, he's teething." And then, he refused to eat. Well, that could be teething too, right? I mean, if I had sharp, calcified protrusions trying to worm their way up through my gums, I might lose my appetite too. And then, he got fussy. Again, I say: Sharp. Calcified. Protrusions.

But then, the fever got higher. And then, the fussiness turned from "I'm kind of grumpy, but if you just let me do whatever I want, I'll be mostly happy" to "Ugh, I hate life. Just give me a beer and leave me alone." And since giving him a beer and leaving him alone would have been considered bad parenting, we instead tried holding him. Rocking him. Singing to him. Reading to him. Feeding him. Making the Dog do crazy tricks for him. All of which served to irritate the living daylights out of him. In fact, for a while there, the only thing that made him happy was watching Lady Gaga music videos on YouTube. (Yes, I know, that could also be called bad parenting, but it seemed to be preferable to selling the kid to the circus, which was our other option at the time.)

So eventually, after a lot of hemming and hawing, we decided to take him to the doctor, only to be handed a diagnosis of Hand, Foot and Mouth. Now, considering that his hands are fine, his feet are fine, and I'm pretty sure that the "blister" on his tongue is actually a result of him biting his tongue a couple of days ago, I'm kind of questioning this diagnosis. But the other option, apparently, was to catheterize him for a urine sample and to take lots of blood for tests that may or may not have revealed anything useful. So. We're running with the Hand, Foot, and Mouth diagnosis for now. And we're watching a lot of YouTube videos.