Of Pomp and Circumstance and Childhood Illnesses

This past Wednesday evening was our Awana Club Award's Night at church.

This is the night where all the kids that attend club are given awards for completing books and for memorizing dozens of scripture verses.

It's a night eagerly anticipated by many of the children, as they receive ribbons and plaques for all their work.

It's also the night where the young people in middle and high school are given their Incentive Award points prizes. Here are a few of the kids from my class receiving their 'giant checks', for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places.



Here is a picture of Judah, which is representative of the disruption he caused during the long awards ceremony. Here he was laying on the floor and making raspberry sounds. Later he bolted across the front of the church to get to his dad on the other side. Not long after that, he ran back across to get to me. We're so proud (sarcasm intended).



Here is the only picture we got of Jericho and his award ribbon. I must've caught him just as he was chewing gum or the lighting was bad or something, because his face doesn't usually look like this.



After the Awards ceremony, there was a little cake and punch reception in the fellowship hall.

It was around this time that Jericho slipped out for a game of tag on the church lawn with a bunch of his friends. When we were ready to go, we rounded him and his stuff up, and I noticed that his face was flushed and he was all itchy.

Whenever Jericho comes in direct contact with grass during tag-turned-wrestling match, he comes home feeling a little itchy, but after a shower, it goes away.

Early the following morning around 6 am, he called out for me, and when I got to his bedroom door, he told me his face and neck were still itchy and that they kind of hurt.

When I looked him over, he did look itchy and miserable, and his eyes looked puffy, so I opted to keep him home from school. He looked like he had bad hives.

I kept an eye on him during the day, trying my best not to go into one of my all too common maternal hypochondria panic attacks.

To rule out possible contact dermatitis, I called the guy who maintains the lawns at church to see if there were any chemicals applied to the grass recently. Sure enough, there had been on Monday.

Oh, boy. Now the waters were further clouded. Was this hives or contact dermatitis?

I vascillated off and on throughout the day between what I knew to be symptoms of each, but when he ate normally, argued with his brother and spent time playing with his toys as usual, I finally decided it was just a case of hives. I even wondered if maybe he was making more of it than he needed to in order to stay home from school.

I felt pretty proud of myself for making it all the way through dinner without having googled his symptoms. Perhaps I was making progress?

However, after dinner, it appeared that the hives had gotten worse, and Lanacane didn't help relieve the itch like it should have. Neither did the antihistamine.

After a shower, he felt worse. To the point where he got all worried. "My throat hurts now, too, mom."

Worried, I felt his forehead, but it was cool. I was relieved. "You're fine, Jericho. You don't have a fever or anything" I said, tucking him into bed. "There is really nothing to be done for hives but to rest and let them go away on their own."

I got out a fan, thinking it might help cool off his face, and the white noise helped him to finally fall asleep, and I wearily fell into bed.

Around 4 am, he called out weakly from his room, "Mom? Come here..."

He'd thrown up. Not good.

While Jeff cleaned things up and Jericho got another shower, I got out my trusty Complete Book of Baby & Childcare manual, and looked up the symptoms for dermatitis and hives, thinking that maybe the chemicals had brought this on. Maybe it was a more severe reaction than usual to the chemicals or something.

Except that I made the mistake of looking up hives in the Emergency section of the book.

Where it mentioned that allergic reactions associated by both hives and difficulty swallowing and vomiting could be a sign of anaphylaxis.

More specifically, Ananphylaxis may lead to cardiac arrest and death if not treated promptly.

And for the second time in a week, my blood went cold.

I showed Jeff what the book said, and at at my pleading he immediately hustled him off to the E.R.

I stayed home with Judah and prayed, both for Jericho and for my own peace of mind. It was a definite battle between trusting in the Lord or giving in to my fears.

About forty minutes later, I finally couldn't take not knowing another second, and called Jeff on my cell. I happened to get him while the doctor was writing out the prescriptions.

"You're never going to believe this" he told me.

"Was it from the lawn chemicals? Is everything okay with Jericho? What did the doctor say?" I asked, obvious concern in my voice.

"Jericho has Scarlet Fever."

"Scarlet Fever?" I could feel the blood drain from my face. I was well aware of what happened to Beth in Little Women, and Mary Ingalls in the Little House books.

Jericho, too, remembered reading through the Little House series as a family last winter, and yowled to the doctor, "I'm going to go BLIND?!" (He doesn't get it from a stranger, I'll admit. His early childhood Samurai training has been a complete bust, I'm afraid.)

The doctor reassured him that he'd gotten in to see her in plenty of time, and that those things were no longer a worry in this day and age.

Already sitting at my computer, I immediately googled Scarlet Fever.

"The doctor said it's been going around like crazy and that they've seen a lot of cases of it" Jeff added. "Jericho has all the classic symptoms...the reddish sandpaper rash, the strawberry tongue, the sore throat, the itchy skin. Oh, and he has an ear infection in his right ear."

"What do they need to do for it?" I asked, still worried about anaphylaxis.

I also second guessed the doctor, peppering Jeff with questions to ask her as though she'd overlooked something. I couldn't bear to think of Jericho coming home and having been misdiagnosed.

You hear stories like that all the time. For crying out loud, people go in to get a kidney removed by a surgeon and end up with a masectomy instead. If that can happen, a misdiagnosis at the E.R. was entirely possible.

I think she was annoyed, but graciously answered all my over-the-phone questions via Jeff.

"They'll give him an antibiotic for 10 days and some pills for the itching" Jeff managed to get in.

"Years ago, it could get really bad and last for a week to ten days with all kinds of possible complications from the fever."

"Yeah, like blindness", I thought, thinking of poor Mary Ingalls.

"With the help of antibiotics, however, it will more quickly run it's course, and he can go back to school once he's been medicated for 24 hours. Some cases are worse than others, and may or may not include all the same symptoms. Jericho doesn't have a fever, so his case seems to be pretty mild."

I heard the doctor mumble something in the background, and Jeff added, "It's basically just a strep throat infection that manifests in a rash in young people."

Those were the words I needed to hear to set my mind at ease. Thank you, Lord!

It was just a li'l ol' strep throat infection?

Aw, shoot...I'd had two or three of those before I'd entered my teen years. No big deal. Take some antibiotics, and it'd clear right up.

I suppose that Jericho was long overdue for something like this having never had to take antibiotics for anything to date.

I never thought I'd be so happy to hear my kid had Scarlet Fever, but when you're worrying yourself into a dither about scary things like anaphylaxis and six-week long chronic hives and a battery of allergy tests, Scarlet Fever sounds pretty good in comparison!

Now, I'm off to catch up on my sleep.