Well, I've diagnosed Gerritt's viral illness today. I was changing his outfit before bedtime & noticed a red rash covering his chest, tummy, back & neck. It wasn't there yesterday. He has Roseola! Yes, the symptoms fit exactly:
- Most common between 9-12 months (it's most common cause of fever in this age group)
- The virus causes 3-7 days of high fever (often > 103). Some kids get runny nose, cough, ear pain, vomiting or diarrhea
- The fever ends abruptly (yes, Gerritt's temperature was back to normal on Tuesday morning)
- A flat or bumpy red rash appears AFTER the fever breaks
- The characteristic of Roseola is that infants don't seem very sick & act almost well when the high fever comes down
- The incubation period is about 10 days
Roseola is caused by the human herpesvirus type 6 or 7. The treatment is mostly supportive: treating the high fever & preventing dehydration.
Now when I think back I am pretty sure Gerritt caught the virus at the Gymboree class. I remember seeing a little crawling girl when we were there. She was drooling all over the place & I was thinking about her saliva being picked up by other playing kids. It makes sense: we went to the Gymboree class on July 15th & Gerritt got a sudden high fever on July 26th (11 days later). No more Gymboree classes for us, thank you. I will have to keep Gerritt away from all of the big stuffed animals in the malls too. There are probably over a hundred kids playing with those toys daily & I can only speculate at the number of pathogens being passed around.
Gerritt's appetite is still not back to normal. It took me about 45 minutes to feed him 4 oz of formula before bedtime today. However, something new happened as well. In my quest to increase Gerritt's hydration I gave him a sippy cup with some diluted apple juice in it. He held the cup with both hands & took 4 real sips from it by tipping it upward. I was amazed!
Another crisis averted...
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