Can't Win

Rather than being productive at work this morning, I thought I'd follow up on my "A Long Night" post. After all, what good is having your own little soapbox if you don't get on it every now and again--and subsequenty don't play with virtual concrete in the process.

For the record, Madelyn is doing much better. Of course, she only acheived this state of health and well-being through a series of small torutres administered lovingly by her parents who will do anything to try to make her better. After her trials and tribulations in the ER Thursday night, her fever continued through the weekend. It wasn't until after she got a special trip to the pediatrician's clinic on Sunday that her fever finally broke.

Nonetheless, before her fever broke she was subjected to a chest x-ray, wherein she was put into a small plexiglass "corset" which came up above her shoulders and forced her to hold her arms above her head (good scary, claustrophobia-inducing stuff there) while her daddy attempted to assure her that everything was fine, as well as a couple of blood samples (one from each arm) for good measure. Madelyn hasn't spoken to us since.

Notwithstanding her parents cruel caution, her fever did break Sunday afternoon and a lovely little pink rash blossom across her body. The final diagnosis: roseola.

So all's well that ends well, right? Actually, that's merely the end of the update on Madelyn's last sickness. This post is actually about the looming possibility of a new and even better illness coming down the line. Last night around 7 PM, Madelyn was snugged in her crib and the hospital called to inform us that during our visit to the ER we had been unknowingly exposed to measles.

Nothing warms a young, naive parent's heart more than to know that his or her efforts and exertions at providing the best possible care for their ailing child-regardless of how much said child does not enjoy the care-are only a means to exposure to a more serious disease. Perhaps next time we'll take her down to the bog-witch for treatment and see if we can't contract yellow fever or malaria in the process.

The good news in all this is that the variety of measles we were exposed to was your garden variety rubeola, as opposed to the potentially more serious rubella (aka German measles). As it turns out, Madelyn being exposed to measles will at most give her another good fever, make her uncomfortable, and provide her with a new rash. The true danger is more to Erin who is now 3 months pregnant and more specifically to the baby swimming laps inside her. While my research into the potential threats to the new baby from rubeola is still ongoing, we dodged a bullet of sorts in that we were not exposed to Rubella, which can potentially cause a variety of birth defects in a baby. If anyone reading this is interested in boning up on their measles knowledge I recommend the following site:

http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/skin/german_measles.html
http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/measles.html

The bad news in all of this, is that Madelyn is off for quick innoculation this afternoon. Just when one thinks their parents are done delivering pokes and prods, they roll out yet another.