S & S

Tuesday morning we found ourselves in the doctors office searching for answers of why Brode had a full body rash.

Friday night after hockey Brode had the start of a body rash on his chest. Without a fever or any cold symptoms we let it go through the weekend. It stayed pretty steady but he developed nothing more.

Monday morning he woke up and it was gone off his chest and back, but his face was bright red with darker areas around the eyebrows and ears. I brought him to day care asking what to do because he has no other symptoms of anything based on their standards of kids staying home. I wasn't able to keep him home because there was nothing I could do for him with no fever, pain, or symptoms so he spent the whole day.

Tuesday morning I checked Brode over before waking him up, still no fever, bit of a rash on his face. I turned on the light to wake up him up, and there it was - all over his arms. His rash was moving from body part to body part for no reason. Because it had spread but he had no symptoms I wanted to get to the doctor to make sure it really was ok for him to be in day care.

9:30AM we sat together in the exam room while 3 doctors inspected Brode, stumped by why he had no fever or redness anywhere else. They looked through pictures, descriptions, etc. until they finally decided to test for strep even though he had no red throat. Sure enough his tests came back positive for strep throat. Once children have the strep virus in their body this forms a toxin that can cause a rash. Only some people are sensetive to the toxin that results in rash, others show no form of it. This rash, better known as scarlet fever (we were laughing that he only had the scarlet without the fever), forms in the exact areas Brode has it on his body in a strange patterns. We got him some antibiotics and he spent two days on the couch. Within the first day his appetite was back and his rash was disappearing.

The hardest part was keeping him content inside all day because he had no fever or "sick" feelings he just wanted to run and have fun and be a healthy little. Unfortunetaly that didn't happen and we made him watch movies, relax, play quietly, and take his medicine.

Lucky for Brode Daddy came over and played for a while in the afternoons, and he received a few 'sick' presents (we'll save that for another post).

Strep throat and scarlet fever. What a fun week. He better be ready for all of our fun plans this weekend!