Yup, that's right. Only my kids get these weird sicknesses. Let me explain what's been going on:
Last Monday or Tuesday, I noticed that Macho had some kind of rash appear on his face. I thought it might have been a heat rash and since he didn't seem bothered by it, I wasn't worried. I also noticed a day or so before that he had a bit of a runny nose, but it wasn't continuous. I just cleaned him up and that was that. Then last Thursday, I noticed he was really warm. I took his temperature and it was 103F! After several attempts to get him to take his medicine and not being successful (he kept throwing it up), I took him to the pediatrician. Macho has Fifth Disease. (if you want to know why it's called that, click here: http://www.webmd.com/hw-popup/where-fifth-disease-got-its-name
Fifth Disease, simply put, is a high fever accompanied by a rash. I was told to continue giving him medicine to control the fever, so that's what I've been doing. I have to mix it into his juice so he won't throw it up. Anyway, now that his fever is finally gone, the rash (which up till now was only on his face) is now all over his body. Further investigating by Husband (http://children.webmd.com/tc/fifth-disease-symptoms) informed us that this rash can last up to 4-5 weeks!!
The only upside is that even though the rash looks bad, in most cases it's not itchy. The other upside is that once the rash has appeared, the disease is no longer contagious. It did say, however, that Macho was probably contagious for 2-3 weeks before any symptoms appeared. So for anyone I've been in contact with during that time, if you have kids and they get sick with this - I'm REALLY Sorry!!!
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