Saturday, July 28, 2007

Roseola?

I jinxed us. Just recently I was thinking that KB hasn't been sick for quite a while.

And then he woke up from his nap yesterday with a fever. Not a big one, 99.3. But since his febrile seizure in October, we don't screw around with fevers anymore. Our pediatrician has advised us to start dosing with Motrin at the first sign of a fever, so I dutifully did.

KB didn't act sick at all -- no coughing, runny nose, lethargy -- no indication whatsoever that he felt bad.

At bedtime, I checked his temperature again. 100.4 with the ear thermometer. Crap. More Motrin. Checked with the digital thermometer under his arm while we read goodnight stories. 101.5. Crap crap.

He still wasn't acting terribly sick, but he was starting to get a little lethargic.

We canceled the lunch we had planned for today (we were supposed to host about a dozen of S's relatives at our house) and wondered what kind of night we were in for.

At 11:15 or so, KB started moaning in his crib. I went to check on him, and he was burning up. It hadn't been 4 hours since I'd given him his last dose of Motrin, so I didn't want to give him anymore yet. I brought him into our bed and we all fell asleep.

At 12:30, he woke up and this time he was REALLY burning up. The ear thermometer read 102.4, so I'm guessing his actual temp was about a degree higher.

More Motrin. Somehow KB thought it was morning, despite the room being pitch dark. He kept rambling about various things, telling me he wanted to go downstairs, telling me he wanted to read Dragon in a Wagon, and saying things like "I needa go over my cousin Aadi's house. I needa swim with my cousin Aadi."

I was afraid he was going to be up for hours because he was wide awake at that point. (S., of course, was able to sleep through all of this despite being in the same bed)

Luckily, KB went to sleep after maybe 30 minutes of babbling.

This morning he woke up at 6:45 (he ONLY sleeps this late when he is sick) happy as a clam. No sign of fever whatsoever. It was so odd. He was tugging on his left ear a lot, though, so we wondered if he had an ear infection.

Our pediatrician's office is open on Saturday mornings, and our ped. happened to be the one in the office today, so we took KB in. The ped. said he's been seeing a lot of this over the last couple of weeks -- fever out of nowhere, no other symptoms of illness. His own son has had something very similar.

He said in many cases, the kids come down with a rash after the fever breaks. "Have you ever heard of roseola?" he asked us. Great.

I've Googled quite a bit, and I'm not sure this is what KB has. For one thing, his fever wasn't super-high. And for another thing, it seemed to be a very short-lived fever, not one lasting 2-3 days.

I guess we will see, if KB comes down with a rash. I'm hoping not.

I really hate it when my baby is sick. He did fall asleep in the car on the way home from the doctor's office (after only being awake for 3.5 hours) and he took a 3 hour nap this afternoon. As I said, the *only* time he sleeps a lot is when he's sick, so I know he feels bad.

No fever when I put him down tonight. Fingers crossed.

1 comment:

Maryam said...

Poor thing.

We went through roseola before. It scared the crap out of me. It is several days of an unbreakable fever and then out of nowhere it stops and the rash appears right away.

I hope he feels better soon.