That morning, she had a very low fever and Joseph suddenly had one that was a bit higher. So I took them both in. While waiting for our turn with the doctor, Joseph threw up. After being examined, the doctor felt for sure that this was strep throat. He could see sore spots in their mouths and Annabelle's rash looks like the one that comes with Scarlet Fever, although he didn't think she had that. He did rapid strep tests on them both (Joseph threw up again because of his) and those were negative. So he sent us home and told us they would do cultures to re-check.
On Saturday morning, Joseph seemed entirely better. Annabelle seemed to be doing better as well; her rash was almost gone, too. We just figured it was a quick virus and we were glad because we didn't want to miss church.
On Sunday, we let them sleep in and only went for the last hour of church, which is Sacrament Meeting for us. They seemed like they were doing way better, so we also went to the ward Father's Day barbecue. However, after the barbecue, I found blisters all over Annabelle's diaper area. And you could tell they were hurting her a lot. This seemed really weird to me, so I called and talked to the on-call nurse at the doctor's office. She told us that Annabelle had Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease! When I got off the phone, I looked at Annabelle's hands and feet and saw little red spots on them. Then I checked Joseph and found the same thing, but he seemed to have more. As the evening progressed, we noticed the kids scratching a lot, so we put hydrocortisone and socks on their hands and feet. They looked pretty cute with sock hands.
The next day, Joseph's spots seemed mostly better. A few had blistered, but most had just disappeared. But Annabelle was an entirely different case. Her hands and feet were covered in blisters and the blisters were spreading up her legs and on her arms. She also had a pretty high fever and was just completely miserable that whole day. So in the evening we took her to the doctor. She met with a PA first, who said that she looked like some really bad cases of HFM that he had seen. But he wanted to get a second opinion just in case, so he brought the doctor in (a different one than the one that diagnosed strep). This doctor took a look at her and determined it was a herpetic virus, similar to the one that causes cold sores. He explained that sometimes kids will get the virus from someone who has a cold sore and, instead of just getting a cold sore, the virus breaks out on their whole body. They prescribed an anti-viral to stop the reproduction of the virus so that she wouldn't get any more blisters.
Annabelle decided with this illness that she hates taking medicine (she used to take it like candy), so we battled over tylenol and benadryl a lot over that week. Luckily, we could put the antiviral in her milk and she couldn't tell the difference (she had to take it 4 times a day for 3 days). She stopped getting spots and the ones she had started to heal. She finally seemed to be doing better.
However, a few days ago, she started a process of peeling that I thought was a part of HFM, so I really have no idea what she had. Her hands and feet are peeling where ever there were blisters; Joseph's are doing the same. But since the ENTIRE bottom of her feet were cover in blisters she is losing all of the skin there. We've had to hold her down every evening so that we can clip some of the dead skin off so that it doesn't catch and pull on things. She hates it, but it seems like the process is almost over. I finally found my camera a couple days ago, so I was able to get some pictures of her poor little feet.
This foot still has most of the dead skin on it, only the toes had been peeled so far.
This foot had peeled the entire bottom off. It's all red and wrinkly and feels just like a newborn babies foot. She also has a band-aid on her second toe where she lost the toe nail. :(
This is just a comparison of the two feet together. Since the picture was taken, almost all of the left foot has peeled as well.
This is a side view. You can sort of see where the old skin is and the new skin starts.
The peeling process seems to be almost over, but her feet and hands are very tender and she doesn't like them getting wet or being touched a lot. She walks on her tiptoes a lot because she doesn't like how her feet feel on the ground, but she doesn't like wearing shoes either. I'm just glad that the process is almost over and that she is finally getting back to normal.
Poor little kiddos! Preston had HFM when he was a kid and it wasn't a bad case but it was hard on it. Those pictures of poor Annabelle's feet are so sad!
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