I promise, I didn't slap them....or did I? Hmmmm...

A couple of weeks ago, Zane woke up with really red cheeks. I thought maybe he'd slept with his face mashed into his pillow. Well, by that afternoon, they were still red as red can be. So I thought to my little oldish self, "Maybe I should take him to the doctor. Why not? I've only been there like 83 times in the past year. What's one more time?" So off we went. Dr. Edwards knew right away what it was~ 5th Disease, aka Slap Cheek Disease aka Parvovirus B19. What the crap? I'd never heard of any of these things. He said it's a virus that is contagious, but you don't know you have it until the rash breaks out and by then it's not contagious anymore. Well isn't that lovely. Then he showed me Zane's arms and the rash was spreading there. He said it could last up to 2 weeks and there was nothing I could do. Thankfully, it wasn't really bothering him. It just looked like I had slapped the kid, hence, Slap Cheek Disease. I talked to some of my sisters, and Laurel said 3 of her kids had something very similar but she thought it was just a reaction to the new sheet rock they were putting up in their house. Then Karen said Nathan had a rash on his face after being at Laurel's, and she thought it was from the sheet rock too. Nope. 5th Disease! Then a couple days later, Lindsay broke out with it. Her's lasted longer than Zane's. We're now done with it, hopefully and I'm sorry if my kids gave your kids 5th Disease. It wasn't planned. :)

I also threw in a picture of Zane's pinkie that still hasn't healed. I finally took him to a Dermatologist yesterday and he injected it with some meds. Yes, I said injected, folks. He said the topical stuff we were putting on it wasn't strong enough, so he stuck a needle in his pinkie and called him Macaroni. What? Sorry for the lame humor. Poor Zane didn't even know it was coming. But it was better that way because if he would have seen the needle he would have FREAKED OUT! So we turned on Finding Nemo and I nonchalantly held his legs down. The Dr. was acting like he was just looking at the pinkie, when WAMMO! he stuck it in. Zane cried pretty hard (it broke my heart) but he did good to hold still. He still doesn't know that it was a needle. He just thinks the Dermo was poking it. Needless to say, it hurt him all day yesterday and he cried about it a lot. He didn't even want to play with his friends. So HOPEFULLY in about 2 weeks I can post something to the effect of "Wonders of Wonders, Miracles, Miracles! It's healed!" We'll see.