As a parent, I’m a big believer that dirt doesn’t hurt. It’s good for kids to get dirty, get exposed to germs, and just wash them off when it’s all said and done. Dirt doesn’t hurt; it’s good for a kid to have that freedom to just get down and dirty. I felt this was a universal rule, but I have found that dirt, can in fact, hurt when my son contracted hand, foot, mouth disease.
Before we get into that, I need to get something off my chest. This should not be called a “disease.” It lasts about a week to ten days, but when you throw out disease, it makes it seem like this is something that he will be burdened with his entire life. Should you call it Hand, Foot, Mouth Syndrome…Sickness…Condition. Maybe it’s just Virus? Even though I haven’t settled on a single one, I feel all of these are better alternatives to disease.
No matter what you want to call it (HFMD, from here forward), it started innocently enough. It seemed like just a regular cold. He was sneezing, had a cough, but seemed fine. He goes to daycare so him being fully healthy is more of an oddity than a little sickness here or there so we thought nothing of it. I started to catch a little sore throat, but I felt strong so no big deal.
But a few days after that started, he came down with a fever. That got taken a little more seriously since it would mean he’d be staying at home, but I had hope that we could send him back in a day or two when he got over everything. Unfortunately, a few hours after he got a fever, my wife noticed little red dots on his face. He gets irritated from different foods, so I told her that it was likely just that, but Mommy’s intuition insisted that it was something more ominous.
Within two minutes, she has diagnosed him with HFMD, and I push back that it’s probably nothing, and those dots will clear up in a few hours. But Mommy wouldn’t let it go, and then she stripped him down and found dots on his feet and a few on his legs as well and called the doctor’s office. When she described what symptoms he had, they didn’t even ask that we take him in, Mommy had diagnosed him correctly, and he had a case of HFMD.
So what this meant for Mommy was lockdown mode as she didn’t want her or I to get it. I kind of figured I was already screwed, because I’m not the most hygenic person (this is where “dirt don’t hurt” got me as well), and most of my parenting is wrestling around with him so I was probably already screwed, but I could at least be more mindful of things.
But my little guy was struggling. He had a fever off and on, the spots were irritating him, and most of all, he was just fatigued. This guy just didn’t have anywhere near his normal level of energy. He would flash some normal energy, but it drained from him quick, and he couldn’t play more than 15-20 minutes at a time without needing a significant break. Even following along with books seemed to put too much strain on him where he would just be mentally exhausted and get fussy. It’s fair; I often get the same way.
So, we had no choice but to just let him relax and watch mindless television. It got very mindless, but with his lack of energy, there was no need to force him to do other things, especially since we were holding down two full-time jobs at home while all of this was going on. Luckily, my mother-in-law was in town to keep an eye on him for a few hours for most of the days.
A few days into his sickness, one of the other mothers at daycare reached out to my wife since she hadn’t seen my son all week. When my wife told her about his struggles with HFMD, the mother immediately responded that this was apparently going all around the school. That would have been nice to know, because we definitely thought our son was patient zero due to the fact that the man puts everything in his mouth (including other children’s arms, but we’ve gotten over that one), but it was some other little dirty rascal that got this whole thing started. My son was a victim.
Somehow, my wife seems to have stayed healthy despite soothing him to sleep every night multiple times (probably all that hygiene mumbo jumbo), and I am fairly sure that I contracted it, although adults often don’t get the spots, the other symptoms are all there. Needless to say, with me being ill and my wife being sleep-deprived, we didn’t mind the screen time marathons as a physical and mental break was welcomed by all.
There’s no treatment for HMFD outside of waiting it out. He’s now on the road to recovery as the spots are clearing up, and his energy has grown by leaps and bounds over the last couple days. It appears that his body is healing on its own which is good, because my only other solution would be to rub some dirt on it.