Another dance with Roseola

Ella’s fever started Wednesday evening. She felt a little warm when I kissed her forehead before bath time. Over the last few years, I have grown confident in identifying fevers in the kids, usually much earlier than Chris. It’s nuanced. They seem a little fussy. A little irritable. It is a subtle, but noticeable, difference, especially to a mom. I pressed the inside of my wrist to her forehead. Confirmation. She was warm. Over the next few hours her forehead became hot to the touch, the kind of heat on a baby’s head that makes you instinctively blow on it to cool them down. She was clingy and ornery. Alternately clambering to be held and then pushing us away as we tried to comfort her. We were worried. Was it a cold? Swine flu? Something more sinister?

The fever and its accompanying irritability carried into Thursday. I called in sick to stay home with her. Thursday night brought no relief. Friday I called in sick again. She cried for much of the day. Nursing brought some, but not total relief. Friday night, still no relief. We spent Saturday and Sunday bouncing, soothing, cooing, cuddling, pacing, worrying and growing increasingly irritable ourselves.

Monday morning, despite her squawky protests, I left for work, leaving Chris to deal with the fallout and a still sick Ella. He walked her and bounced her and spoke softly and held her gently, but to no real avail. At his wit’s end, he strapped her in her car seat and drove her around for the rest of the day. For three hours he drove, singing songs to Jay in the back seat and hoping Ella would just please god, please, go to sleep. She did, fitfully.

When he got home he changed her diaper and found the tell tale red rash of Roseola spreading out across her belly, chest and back.

And now it all makes so much sense. The sudden high fever. The irritability. And of course, the rash that doesn’t make its appearance until you’ve nearly sold your child to the Gypsies. With Roseola the only way to confirm the diagnosis is the rash, which comes along after four or five days of total and complete misery.

We’ve danced this tango once before.

Funny that I didn’t think of it initially, because the virus is etched into my memory, a memory of Jay at eight months, of me, a new mom at the time and the both of us two time zones away from home and our doctor.

I was traveling for work, at our organization’s annual conference, that year in Washington State. It was a five day gig, and still nursing, I had no real choice. I had a conference to organize and a high needs baby who needed me more than air itself. He’d be coming with me. I hired a local babysitter to watch Jay in my hotel room and packed his diaper bag.

His fever began on Wednesday night, the first night of the conference. The sitter called me back to the room. She just couldn’t seem to soothe him. So began five of the worst days of my life. He had a fever, but I had no idea how high it was. My mind swirled with stories of baby’s brains frying from high fevers, and incurring irreversible brain damage. I had no baby Tylenol. No thermometer. No rental car to go get Tylenol and a thermometer. And I was supposed to be out organizing a conference, where seventy-five people gathered for this once a year event.

Desperate, I called the taxi service that had brought us to the hotel from the airport. Could they have one of their drivers go to a drugstore and buy a thermometer and some acetaminophen? I’d pay double the price of the thermometer and they could charge me whatever they wanted for the effort. I was convinced my baby was going to die right there in my arms in this tiny little town at the foot of the Cascade Mountains. I felt completely powerless and scared out of my mind.

Twice Jay went into convulsions, from the fever, I learned. I nearly fainted from fear. Calls to the doctor were somewhat soothing. They assured me that convulsions from fevers were not uncommon, and instructed me to try to keep the fever down with Tylenol and cool baths. Not uncommon? Holy shit. My baby is convulsing. Remain fucking CALM?

Tylenol and cool baths worked intermittently. Nothing took the fever completely away. Mostly I paced and we both cried for five days and I was sure that on top of losing my baby, I would surely lose my job. The sitter did her best to hold and soothe him while I sprinted out to check on presenters and make sure projectors were where they were supposed to be. By the third day I was a sleepless disheveled mess, completely exhausted from trying to bridge the polarity of sick baby and professional obligations. Day four brought diarrhea and the understanding that I was way the hell over my head. I implored my boss at midnight to take us to Urgent Care. Without delay, Bill, a parent himself, climbed into the driver’s seat and in his haste to get us there, we side swiped the car of one of our funders. And we kept going.

We returned at two in the morning, with nothing more than a diagnosis of, “Yep, he sure looks sick.” The doctor there didn’t know what it was, and suggested I bring Jay back the next day if he didn’t improve. I spent the entire next day holed up in my room, job be damned. I made up my mind on where to focus my energy. A sick baby trumps everything.

His fever broke the day we left. He nursed for most of the plane ride home, but fitfully. When we got home, I changed his diaper and discovered a little belly covered in tiny red dots. What could this be? I was almost too scared to call the doctor. Afraid that they would diagnose him with something terrible, perhaps worse than terrible, I hesitated. My hesitation gave way to panic and I frantically dialed the number. I left a message and waited for the nurse to call me back. When the phone rang, I was a trembling. But the nurse was calm and reassuring, as pediatric nurses are wont to be.

Roseola.

She described the symptoms in exact detail and I felt an enormous wave of relief. Finally. I had a name for this misery. Somehow, giving an illness a name reduces its power to inflict fear. I relaxed for the first time in five days and finally, we both slept soundly.

Ella’s recovery comes just a day before we leave for the UP, which is good timing. A few more days and history might have repeated itself.

... Except that these days I don’t travel without a thermometer and a medicine cabinet full of Children’s Tylenol.