Charlotte Fever

Hi Everyone,

I hope you had a fantastic Easter. Ours was great, although it got off to a rocky start.

Charlotte came home from daycare on Wednesday wiped out. One of the teachers remarked how she napped for two hours and then laid down on a bench while the rest of the kids were playing outside. Charlotte almost never naps anymore, so we knew she was getting sick. She also complained of a sore throat.

On Thursday morning, she came into our room desperately thirsty. I also noticed that she was scratching at the skin near the waistband of her pajama pants. After closer inspection, it was pretty clear that she had a rash forming all over her body.

Because Chris had stayed home with her the previous week when she had thrown up in the middle of the night, it was my turn to stay home. I first rushed off to work to print off some things I could do at home. When I got back, Chris had been doing some digging on the Internet and thought that maybe she had Scarlet Fever. I laughed it off because not even two weeks prior, I had watched an episode of Girls in which Lena Dunham's neurotic character swears that she had diagnosed herself with scarlet fever as a child thanks in part to watching Little Women.

However, I called the advice nurse anyway, who upon hearing my description of the symptoms, decided to schedule a doctor's appointment just in case. Turns out? Yep, scarlet fever and strep throat. It's not an old timey disease after all. Scarlet fever happens to be a manifestation of the streptococcus bacteria and is easily treatable with antibiotics. However, in the pre-antibiotics days, it could definitely be a fatal disease, even causing those afflicted to contract serious side effects like endocarditis. That's ultimately what Beth March of Little Women succumbed to.

Twenty-four hours after the first dose of antibiotics and Charlotte was the same little ball of energy we know. She spent all of Friday endlessly peppering Chris with questions about the movies she was watching; this was a 180 degree change from Thursday when she was so lethargic she passed out on the couch for nearly three hours.

What I find hilarious is that Charlotte has trouble pronouncing "sk" words like school, scared, or skating. Instead, she says shool, shared, shating. (Side story: last week I tried to get her to say "scared" and she said "I can't say that, but I can say afraid."). So naturally, scarlet fever equals Charlotte fever.

 

I, for one, am happy to say good riddance to March. With the daycare debacle and the never-ending sickness of at least one of us, it's been a rough month. I cannot wait until Friday, when we go to our friends' wedding in the mountains for a weekend of spring skiing, catching up with dear friends, and a break from our darling daughters. I'm actually taking a vacation day and not a work from home because the daycare is closed/one daughter is sick/the other daughter is sick/I'm sick. We're so grateful to my mom coming up to stay with her cute granddaughters.