the african motaba...

I’ve got the hand, foot & mouth disease. God, even typing it gives me the dry heaves. What a gross name. I caught it from the monkey, and this is, apparently, what gifted him with his insanely high fever last weekend and landed us in the ER…welp, now momma’s got it and it’s no picnic. Superficially, it’s not as bad as it sounds. From the name of it, you’d expect me to look like something from return of The Swamp Thing (is that even a real movie? I just pulled that out of my ass.) but I don’t have anything on my face, thank god, the tips of my fingers hurt and I have tiny red bumps on a few of my knuckles and the bottoms of my feet that feel like paper cuts soaked in lemon juice. THAT'S fun. Ben has made a full recovery and seems to have dodged this particular set of symptoms, for which I am ever thankful.

I started feeling pretty awful Tuesday night into Wednesday  with a fever under 4 layers of comforters, chattering teeth and the whole enchilada. Wednesday I was basically the walking dead. By last night, the little spots started to appear and a lightbulb went off in my head flashing back to all the books I crammed on child-rearing in my 9^th month of pregnancy and I consulted Dr. Google and sure enough, I had my diagnosis.

We’ve got little JR at daycare to thank for this, by the way. A week and a half ago, he and Ben were “playing dentist, sticking their hands in each other’s mouths, oh it was so cute!” as told by his teacher…..

Um…not so cute, actually. a few days later, Ben is in the ER and when I bring him back to daycare and ask, casually, if any of the other kids had been sick, they mention that JR had “ a little rash around his mouth, but it’s all cleared up now” until I look at poor little JR and basically? Well that rash? Not so cleared up, actually.

So, that’s where I’ve been folks…mending the monkey and shivering, sucking down Theraflu, whining and scratching my spots. Sweet visual, eh?

So if you’ve got munchkins, keep an eye out for this little doozy, especially if they are in daycare “playing dentist”. It comes on like a freight train with an insanely high fever and seems to run it’s course pretty quickly but the in-between is no party.

This has been your Cocksackie Public Service Announcement. Stay safe, my friends.