Killer plants!

Monday night Lyman started showing a weird rash on his face. We thought it could be from the Halloween mask he just tried on but were skeptical since he hasn't been allergic to anything before. So I put some hydrocortisone on it and sent him to bed.

Tuesday morning he woke up and the rash was unaffected and even worse. He also had it on one of his hands then and I totally freaked. Hand, foot and mouth disease is a common kid disease but its really contagious and really terrible to have to deal with. Plus the fact that it is similar to some hoof disease on live stock makes it all the more hideous. I called the Dr to get an appt that morning for him and thought that if he has this we are going to give him hand sanitizer baths every 2 minutes and maybe setting up quarantine for him in his bedroom. I did not need that virus spread around my house. Apparently it is also dangerous to be exposed to the disease while pregnant so that would have been super delightful to have to deal with as well.

The Dr came in and with in about a nano-second she diagnosed him as having nothing but a good case of poison ivy. She even seemed to be somewhat surprised and amused that I didn't know that. I'm sure we have poison ivy in Colorado but in all my decades of living there I had never encountered it. I went to girls camp and they taught us how to spot it (though I doubt I really ever learned since I don't know how to spot it now) and then that was it. Nobody ever saw it, nobody ever got it, and for all I knew it was a camping "myth" like going snipe hunting. In Colorado the plants do not attack you. Here in Ohio there are numerous plants that like to do just that.

So Lyman got prescribed some steroids to help him fight the poison and also an antihistamine to help with the inching. He was amused and doubly motivated to take his medicine despite its inherent flavor of putrid garbage because he learned that steroids give you big muscles and make you want to play baseball.