Roseola

A week before our vacation Katherine came down with a little virus all of a sudden. It is nothing out of the ordinary for a kid her age to have a sniffly nose or low grade fever. She is still building up her immune system and on top of that she's constantly sticking her hands in her mouth wherever we go. So even with very frequent hand washing and sanitizing with cleaner and cleaning shopping cart handles etc, she is bound to pick up between ten and fifteen colds per year in her first two years of life, according to our doctor.

She has only had high fever once before, when we both had a stomach bug. So this time, when I noticed she was running a fever, I started giving her Infants Tylenol to get it down and make her more comfortable. Well on day two of that, the fever was not really going down all that much so I decided to call the triage nurse from our pediatrician office (since it was over the weekend... how does it happen that kids ALWAYS get sick over the weekend). The nurse told me that I was doing everything right and since by the time she called me back the fever seemed to be breaking, and there were no other symptoms of any kind, that this was just probably a small virus, but that they still would like to see her on Monday.

So on Monday morning we went in, at that point the fever was definitely going way down. The doctor tested her for strep throat (bacterial infection) which turned out negative, and so since this was looking like a viral infection we were sent home to rest and drink lots of fluids and just wait it out.

Well on Tuesday morning Katherine woke up completely fever free (YEA!) but completely covered in these little red spots all over her chest, belly, back and some on arms and legs.

When I saw that I sighed a big sigh of relief! I had heard about that stuff before. A girl I know who has a baby the same age as Katherine had her little boy go through the same kind of infection a few months earlier. A few days of really high fever followed by a red spotty rash.

Of course I called our doctor to make sure they agreed this was ok, and I also googled the symptoms. I found out that this was a very common infant virus called roseola and that virtually all children under three go through it. In some other languages roseola is called Three Day Disease because the high fever usually lasts three days. Katherine had classic symptoms. Bottom line, completely benign and normal, and no special treatment required other than making sure the baby doesn't become dehydrated. In our case, Katherine was drinking plenty water all throughout.

Here is what it looked like on her belly.

As soon as the fever broke and the rash appeared she was back to her normal self playing and climbing everywhere like a maniac. You can see on the picture above that she is in full play mode, despite the rash, wearing all her necklaces... haha...

The only weird and kind of spooky about this situation was the fact that my sister's little boy, who is also the same age as Katherine, actually got roseola at the same exact time as she did! No, not from her! Remember, they live in Poland!! How crazy is that! Two kiddos, same age, get the same disease the same exact weekend!

Here is what the rash looked on Cousin Michal.

The virus is now long gone and both of them are totally fine! Isn't this a crazy story??!!