Baby Typhoid Mary
Everyone told me that when the Bean started daycare, my immune system would be shit for the first year. I was hoping I would somehow avoid this truth through vitamins and sheer force of will, but no; I have been sick straight for the past three months.
I’ve had your run-of-the mill colds and sinus infections, but my body has also gotten really creative. What I thought was the flu was actually a raging case of mastitis. Not long after I recovered from the mastitis, I came down with another fever. No problem, right? Probably just another case of mastitis. But then I got a little red bump on my thumb. I assumed it was a bug bite. Damn spiders! But then the red bumps spread over my hands, and onto my feet. (Where are all these spiders coming from?!)
I went to the doctor, and like any good lawyer, came ready with a diagnosis- the bumps must be an allergic reaction to the medication I was taking for my sinus infection. The doctor examined my hands and feet, typed into the computer for a few seconds, and then broke the news. It wasn’t an allergic reaction. It was hand, foot and mouth disease. If you’re unfamiliar with hand, foot, and mouth disease, Google at your own risk. It’s disgusting. Even the doctor kept her distance as she told me the bad news. I’d known the disease was going around the Bean’s daycare, and was carefully monitoring her mouth for sores, but I wasn’t worried about catching it because the Internet said that it’s rare for adults to catch, and the Internet never lies. Well, I caught it. And it was as bad as you are currently imagining.
Once your high fever dissipates, you break out in red blisters all over your hands and feet. I was lucky, and didn’t get any sores in my mouth. I did, however, get sores on my eyebrows. Tell me how gross that is. If you’re looking for an excuse not to have sex with your spouse, consider contracting hand, foot, and mouth. Your spouse won’t even want to share the same couch. The disease lasts for 7–10 days, and, unless you hate humanity, you have to quarantine yourself because you are wildly contagious. The blisters burn, and, in my case, prevented me from sleeping. There’s no medicine to help with the discomfort, and the only way I was able to fall asleep was if I held an ice pack. Once the blisters dissipate, your skin peels off. It’s as if your body is aggressively trying to forget what it just went through.
To add insult to injury, I got a text from my brother saying, “Hey I’ve been telling my friends you have hoof and mouth disease. Is that accurate?” NO, MICHAEL, FARM ANIMALS GET HOOF AND MOUTH DISEASE. I HAVE HAND, FOOT, AND MOUTH DISEASE. IT’S TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
Five days into the disease, my husband came home from work “feeling weird.” By the time dinner was over, he had spiked a 102 degree fever. We were supposed to go to New York in two days, so I tried to be optimistic. Maybe it’s not hand, foot, and mouth disease! You might’ve just caught a 24-hour flu…
Once he started getting bumps on his hands, I still tried to be optimistic, and told him that he might have just caught a “quick case” of hand, foot, and mouth. I’m laughing as I write this, because he caught the WORST case of hand, foot, and mouth disease. He had sores all over his face and couldn’t go to work for a week because, even after he ceased to be contagious, he still looked like he had leprosy.
Needless to say, we didn’t go to New York, but we finally recovered. The Bean never caught it, thank god, and once we did a few loads of laundry, our lives went back to normal. I keep getting sick, but not with any skin diseases, so I’ve stopped noticing that I’m sick. There’s a chance I currently have walking pneumonia, but I’m tired of going to the doctor, so I’m just going to drink some wine and wait this one out.