When You Assume...

In my experience, toddler illnesses are often like episodes of the Simpsons. You know how you can never tell what a Simpsons is going to be about at the beginning? Never a truly great Simpsons scholar, I'm afraid I can't give you any actual examples. But there's definitely this thing that they do where the opening scenes seem to be heading the plot in one direction, and then at some point about five minutes in, things veer off in another direction entirely. Say the first five minutes is about, I don't know, Bart getting his first B+ or something, and then you think that the whole episode is going to be about Bart and school, but then Marge and Homer decide to celebrate by taking the kids to an amusement park, and the actual plot turns out to be all about the amusement park. That's a lame example, but I imagine you know what I mean.

And so it is in the world of infectious disease in the under-4 set. The first signs of illness are crankiness and vomitting, and it turns out to be... strep throat. Or the first signs of illness are a fever and clinginess, and it turns out to be... an ear infection so bad it bursts the eardrum. And so it was this time, as Cassie's symptoms leading me to think of a bacterial infection, probably bladder, turned out to be... well, viral, anyway. Quite possibly Coxsackie virus (a.k.a. hand-foot-and-mouth disease), which gives you nasty painful ulcerative sores... in your mouth and throat. The bladder thing is looking now like a total red herring.

So, well, whatever. At least we don't have to figure out ways to get antibiotics into her several times a day. And her fever's gone, or nearly so.

The unfortunate thing (well, besides my having to miss clinical yesterday) is that this is the weekend that Cassie got to bring home Buzz Junior Teddy. BJT is a silver-clad astronaut bear who goes home for the weekend with each preschooler in turn, and gets his adventures documented with photos and narrative in the notebook that comes with him. Cassie's mentioned this whole thing several times in the past, and I think it's kind of a big deal to her. And we just have not been showing little Buzz a very good time. At least I had the presence of mind to take the traveling bear and our camera to the pediatrician's office yesterday, and got a shot of him on Cassie's lap as the doctor listened to her lungs, and then another one of Buzz posed nicely next to the glass jars of cotton balls and tongue depressors. Rather arty.

We hope to be able to go to the art museum tomorrow, if Cassie's well enough. Our friend Lucine would come along, and Buzz could look at the mummies, and a good time might be had by all. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.