Bumps, shots and general blahs
At our house, either we’re all fine or we’re all having some kind of medical issue at the same time. And those issues are usually totally unrelated.
A couple of weeks ago, The Wife, The Boy and The Girl were all battling something or other – pink eye, an ear infection and some kind of viral infection. This week, it’s my turn to feel bad and The Boy has joined me on the roster of the walking wounded with a mystery rash. Plus, The Girl had her six month check-up and vaccinations already on the schedule.
Patient #1
Hmm, let’s start with me. Basically I went to bed last night feeling fine and woke up this morning feeling like crap. A monster headache, an uneasy stomach, general weakness, the works. Fortunately by about three this afternoon, most of the symptoms seem to have disappeared.
Actually I had been expecting something like this for a while. The Wife always comments that she’s amazed by the small amount of sleep I require each night, but this is the cost – I can go several weeks sleeping just three or four hours a night, but one day I’ll wake up and my body just refuses to cooperate. Usually a good 24 hours of laying low and recharging my batteries works the trick and it looks like that’s the case once again.
Patient #2
The Boy has some kind of mystery rash. Fortunately it doesn’t seem to be bothering him. He generally complains at the drop of a hat about any possible discomfort, but he says he feels fine – no itching, no irritation, nada. It’s also hard to say whether he’s getting better or not either because the bumps have been appearing and disappearing on different parts of his face over the past week.
As far as we can tell, he hasn’t gotten into anything or been exposed to anything out of the ordinary. They seem to be exacerbated by the heat, but it’s not a heat rash. They heal too quickly and vary in size too much to be bug bites. It’s a medical mystery.
We took him to the doctor on Sunday (our pediatrician has started seeing kids on the weekends for an additional $30 that sucker panic-stricken parents like us will pay) and the pediatrician on call basically said he had no idea what was going on. He prescribed The Boy some strong cream to apply to the afflicted areas. I’m not sure if it’s working or not.
The only thing I can think of that has changed in his daily routine is swimming. He’s been taking swimming lessons for the past week and did a little bit of swimming when he was visiting his grandparents. Is it possible that he’s having some sort of a reaction to the chlorine or other chemicals in the pool? And if so, why are the spots just on his face – that’s the one part of him that doesn’t get wet in the pool?
I’d like to know the cause, but honestly I’ll be okay if it just disappears without any explanation. I’m mostly about the end results these days.
Patient #3
Well, there wasn’t anything wrong with her, but The Girl did have her six month check-up (and another exciting round of immunizations) today. It’s a trip to the doctor, so it counts as a medical issue for the purposes of this post.
Our first round of immunizations was a nightmare. She was sick for several days afterwards. The second round resulted in an evening of unbridled crankiness, but she seemed to recover fairly quickly the next day. We weren’t exactly looking forward to today’s shots.
We needn’t have worried though. Despite getting poked with five needles in her chubby little thighs, she had stopped crying by the time we walked out of the office. And other than some extreme sleepiness on the way home, she seemed to be back to her normal happy self by the time dinner rolled around. Yay for mature immune systems!
The doctor confirmed what we already knew – she’s tall (2’3″) and about average weight (16 lb, 11 oz) for her age. Her head circumference is about normal too. I’m not going to give her exact head circumference measurement to you, because you don’t know what it should be anyway. Don’t pretend you do either.
Before we left the house, I remembered that we had taken pictures of The Boy at his six month visit and grabbed the camera so we could take some photos today. So now I’ve got pics of both kids at their half-year check-ups:
Sadly, the photos are not to scale. As we discovered while looking through his baby book this evening, The Boy was actually a bit larger at his six month appointment than The Girl was today. They definitely could pass for twins though!
Fries at the bottom of the bag
- We may be making some progress on the solid food front. The Girl now seems to understand that the mushy stuff is supposed to go inside her mouth.
- We discovered a fun new game last night. The Girl thought it was absolutely hilarious for me to hold her up in the air and then thrust her towards her brother, who would then pretend to fall over. Both of them were laughing for nearly twenty minutes.
- Also fun was the “Sit on Dad” game. I didn’t enjoy that one as much.
Landon gets red spots like that when ranch dressing touches his face. No where else on his body – maybe cause his skin is thinner on his face? Good luck with that. (I’d guess the chlorine is probably not the culprit, simply because there’s not that much in the water and a normal allergic reaction to chlorine is respiratory, not rashy.)
Now we need 6-month old pictures of you and The Wife to see which baby looks like which parent.
Don’t forget about my strep throat and the giant penicillin shot of doom. That was awesome.
@The Wife: To be honest, I have a hard time keeping up with all of your various ailments. If this is how you roll in the prime of your life, we should probably looking into buying a room at the hospital for retirement.
@Kristine: Yeah, I don’t really think it’s the pool either. That’s just the only thing I can think of that’s changed. He’s probably sleepwalking and running out to the backyard and rubbing his face in the poison ivy in his sleep or something.
I may be able to accommodate your 6-month parent pictures request. Just give me some time.