The crazedparent house is a hot zone of germs. Take your pick: hand/foot/mouth disease or the stomach flu. We've got it all.
Apparently hand/foot/mouth disease has been on the up tick in the county where we live, causing health officials to ask all pediatricians to report every seen case (read: epidemic). On Monday, our pediatrician told us she saw 30 cases of it in September, which is rare. She said for every 30 cases, there are likely 300 other cases where parents don't even recognize the symptoms. In mild cases, a child may have a sore throat and cold-like symptoms. Parents may not see the blisters in the kid's throat. So the kid goes to school...contagious.
If your kid has hand/foot/mouth disease and your doctor tells you that it's okay to send your kid to school so long as he or she is fever-free, don't. It's not true. So long as the kid is still getting blisters, he's spreading the virus. And you don't have to tell me how hard it is to keep a kid home for what could be two weeks. Or how hard it is to work while the kid is home. Be responsible and keep your kid from spreading this nasty, highly contagious (and gross!) virus.
Q.'s been home for a week. Five days into his recovery, his pops caught it. Do you know how hard it is for adults to get this disease? Now he has to stay home until he's no longer contagious.
Mid-morning on Thursday, I got "the call" from Six's school. Oh no, he didn't throw up in class like he did last Halloween. I found him curled in a ball on the little bed in the school's office. He was trying so hard not to cry. And then he threw up in the car on the ride home...the day before Halloween.
For the second year in a row, the crazedparent fam will not be trick or treating. We have fabulous homemade costumes. We have cool neon lights to wear around the 'hood. We have a party to attend. Alas, not a chance. We're starting to think we have a little Halloween curse. I feel the worst for Six, who hasn't attended his school's Halloween parade yet, and he's only in first grade.
I won't say whether I'm healthy or not for fear of jinxing my immune system. But being in a house with three sick males? Please. Just pluck my eyelashes out one by one.
I'm thinking a week away, all by myself, should be sufficient payback.
