On Saturday, Cole woke up with spots all over his belly and back. We were hoping that they were just some kind of bug bites or a reaction to his sunburn. However, in the back of my mind, I remembered reading about several friends kiddos having chicken pox within the last week. Plus, he did have the low-grade fever the day before.
I had agreed to watch John’s cousins kiddos the week before, so they were to arrive around noon. We decided to hit McDonald’s for lunch before a day of swimming and playing.
I called John’s cousin to tell her there was the possibility that Cole had the chicken pox. She did not seem too concerned. He had been vaccinated.
So we went along with our day as planned. I called my friend and she told me about two of her kiddos having spots and that she took her daughter to a nurse prac. who diagnosed her with chicken pox. She had all the symptoms that Cole had, too.
After reading several messages on Facebook about some of the other kiddos who had the pox, I called our doctor’s office and they referred us to the ER since Cole was having eye pain associated with the spots. After about an hour and a half of isolation, Cole was diagnosed with ‘possible early chicken pox’. I was a little surprised at this because that was my diagnosis when I walked in the door and had him admitted. I guess I was expecting something a little more definitive.
He ended up with a prescription to be filled if/when the spots turn into blisters. We are hoping that they don’t. They also said that his eyes were fine and gave no explanation as to why they were so red and hurting. We were glad that his eyes were fine. There was talk of blindness and things that tend to scare the momma. ;) We prayed for the best case scenario and got it!
Since they weren’t sure if he had chicken pox, they treated him as if he did and he was isolated. All the triage ‘stuff’ was done in a room. Here he is getting his vitals checked.
We had to wait a long time before the doctor came in, so the nurse gave Cole the remote and told him he had his choice of two channels—the patient channel and Cartoon Network. It was funny because when he finally decided to turn the TV back on the second time, he said, “Watch. As soon as I turn the TV on, they will come back in.” Sure enough, they did. :)
The nurse took the BP cuff off his arm and forgot to turn the machine off. It inflated and inflated until we thought it was going to blow up. He decided to pretend like he was dead when they came to check the machine. (He has his grandpa’s sense of humor.)
I looked at my arms and told Cole I was a freckle-potamus and he was a spot-a-potamus. He looked at his arm and said he was a hairy-potamus and I changed into something inappropriate and we laughed for probably five minutes. The off and on inappropriate for our surroundings kind of laugh that you can’t help but do every time you look at the other person. He started giving me the evil eye because we couldn’t stop.
All in all, Cole is feeling pretty good. He’s tired and hasn’t had his normal voracious, growing boy, appetite, but his spots are minimally itchy and he has only had about 3 spots turn into blisters and they went back down to regular spots. We are so glad he is okay and glad that this happened to him as a child and not as an adult.
We are actually kind of excited about being forced to stay home until he’s better. I’m pretty sure he did this on purpose. :) I love my little homebody.
