Luke Has Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease

I just got home from Urgent Care with Luke and he has Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease. I'm trying to let everyone know who Luke has had contact with over the past 5 days. You'll want to watch your kids for symptoms and try to avoid passing this disease along to other kids.

It is highly contagious among children under 10 years old, but it is harmless and won't cause any long-term problems. Adults aren't as likely to catch this, but could pass it on without knowing it. The doctor said that Luke could even transmit it to the baby just by breathing in her face. Children's Urgent Care has seen over a hundred cases in the past week.

I was told to wash my hands after touching Luke and before touching Lexie; that should be enough to keep her from catching this.

Symptoms are high fever, a lack of appetite, and blister-like sores on the bottoms of feet, palms of hands and in the mouth and throat. Not all children will have blisters on feet and hands, but most will in the mouth.

Luke's fever got as high as 103.2, but it's down to 101 now. They have me giving him Motrin/ibroprofen every 6 hours to keep the fever down and help with the throat pain. He hardly ate anything today, but the doctor said not to worry about that as long as he's drinking plenty of fluids -- either juice, water or milk. The scariest thing for me was when his fever got so high around 9:00 pm and he was laying there looking so lethargic.

Sorry that I had no idea Luke was getting sick or I'd have never taken him to all those events this past weekend and Thursday and Friday. I'm guessing he came in contact with it at the Boonshoft Museum on Wednesday. The fever didn't appear until early this afternoon. The fever could last 3-5 days and he's contagious for a few days after the fever disappears.

Here is more information and details on Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease from the Center for Disease Control:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/revb/enterovirus/hfhf.htm