Rosey Ozzy

not easy to see the rash. it looks way worse in person. it's all over his forehead, sides of his face, nose, neck, ears, chest, back, abdomen)

friday ozzy came down with roseola. we were at the pool for a party and near the end of the party i noticed he felt terribly hot. when we got home, i took his temp and it was over 103 degrees. then for the next several days, saturday, sunday, monday, it was nonstop rounds of motrin and tylenol to control the fever. even with the meds his temp would only get as low as 101 and as the motrin wore off it would scoot back over 102. by monday night at 12:45 a.m., ozzy's temp skyrocketed to 104.5, his body was literally radiating heat, i could feel it before my hands even touched his skin that felt too hot to even believe. when i got him into the light i saw his face and body were covered in a diffuse rash, covering his face, ears, neck, chest, back and the backs of his knees.

these are moments i know panicking does no good, but it's hard not too when your baby is so sick. a part of me knows he probably wont die from it, but awful thoughts come unbidden, torturing my mind with these mental images of me holding my dying baby in my arms.

so i'm rushing to bring down his temperature, trying not to be frantic. he's crying and so clearly miserable. i finally get him to calm down by taking his clothes off, cradling him, and slowly feeding him small bites of frozen banana, with each bite he eats, he seems to savor each cooling piece of slowly melting banana. at this point i'm pretty sure it's roseola, but not absolutely certain that its not influenza of some form, so i'm trying to decide if we need to go see the doc the next day, so i wake rob up to tell him my concerns (and to pass off ozzy, so's i can use the 'loo) . rob thought we should just wait to see how he was doing in the morning and so i finally went to bed and rob slept holding ozzy until ozzy woke in the morning.

the next morning ozzy seemed to be doing much better, but still was holding on to a fever over 101. so i took him to see the pediactrician, just to rule out any other infection. doc confirmed it was roseola and advise that i just continue to do what i was and she said that sometimes the rash is itchy and to give him some benadryl if it's the case.

of course, the rash is unbearable and he's so miserable in his own skin he can't stop whining and squirming. so i can barely hold him, he's squirming so much, but when i put him down he starts wailing because he's just miserable and he wants me to hold him, but he's so uncomfortable that he cant even find comfort in being held. and it was like this ALL FRICKIN' DAY. seriously, i understood why some creatures eat their young at that moment.

i tried several times to give him benadryl. we have the children's suspension liquid and he needs to have almost a teaspoon of the stuff. a teaspoon never sounds like a whole lot of anything, UNTIL you've tried to give it as medicine to a cranky baby! it was like he was drowning in a teaspoon of benadryl. he was coughing and sputtering and spitting it all over himself and me.

clean up and try it again later.

the next time, as soon as he sees the medicine dropper coming at him, he slapped it away so violently that it actually sprayed out of the dropper by centrifugal force everywhere. several g's of force came shooting out in the form of bubblegum flavored liquid suspension all over me, the floor, the counters. one teaspoon hardly seems like a lot UNTIL you've had to wipe ubersticky bubblegum smelling benadryl off everything.

clean up and try it again later. having had enough of sticky syrupy messes on a ballistic trajectory, i decided to just mix in some benadryl with a little bit of milk in a bottle and feed it to him. of course he's not hungry or thirsty and keeps shoving the bottle away. when he senses i'm not giving up, he finally begins to scream and claw at me to force me to stop the madness.

and so the day continued with him unable to get relief, crying if i didnt hold him and crying and squirming if i did hold him. it was exhausting and frustrating for me, but i could only imagine how much worse it must have felt to be him. poor little, man. i hope you are better soon, so i wont have to eat you.