Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Who knew hand, foot, mouth disease was a real thing? Or that it was "fairly common"? I've never heard of it before...until Friday.

We noticed Paela had a fever Tuesday evening, and she was obviously feeling icky all day Wednesday. A pretty nasty fever of 103, but tylenol helped a little. Thursday the fever was gone and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief that we didn't have to figure out what a doctor visit without insurance would run us. Note to future self: move "figure out what we should do about insurance" a little higher up on the to-do list.

However, Thursday night a couple hours after she went down for the night and right before Wayne got home from late classes, she started screaming. And she screamed. And screamed. No matter what we tried, we couldn't seem to calm her down. We rocked her, bounced her, kissed her, stood on our heads, and scratched our noses until our ears turned blue. And still she screamed. Off and on every 5-20 seconds. For three hours. She pulled the pacifier out of her mouth, and screamed. Put it back in, pulled it out again, threw it, and screamed. Finally she cried down to just a whimper and slept for six hours. We slept on edge wondering when she would start screaming again. She did so a couple of hours before she usually wakes up.

Friday we learned about hand, foot, mouth disease, which she had apparently been exposed to. We couldn't get a good look in her mouth, other than seeing some pretty inflamed gums, but blisters started showing up on, you guessed it, her hands, feet, and the edge of her mouth. We can only assume the poor thing has them in her mouth as well. Hence the mixed feelings about her pacifier, food, and any other object she would normally chew on with glee. Oh the tragedy for poor Paela. She spent a good chunk of the last several days flinging random objects away from her and screaming because it hurt her mouth.

Thankfully she is in better spirits today, and ate nearly all her normal breakfast. She threw up a small bit of it a little later though, so maybe it was too quick since she has not eaten much since Tuesday.

And Wayne and I...survived. I can't remember much to elaborate on. Obviously we were too quick to assume she was transitioning to one nap a day, since she's had two naps (and sometimes three) a day all week. I had an interview in Menlo Park Tuesday that was fun; we'll wait and see where that goes. Wayne worked hard on a project for finals coming up this week. We had a fun half hour in the park sliding down slides. Paela would start at the bottom of the play-thing, climb up to the top, try and walk onto the slide, Wayne would help her sit down. And then she'd giggle as she slid down on her own into mommy's arms. She prefers the twisting slides. I remember I had a good giggle with Paela when she came out of my room with my shirt over her head. Mostly we wondered how in the world people survive these things with tougher viruses like chicken pox. Or more than one kid. Or only one parent. They must be wonder parents. Or maybe their kids don't care about their hands, feet, or mouths.