Health issues

The last few days that the kids were off-track, Baby K was cutting her upper two teeth and was super whiny! She wanted me to hold her all the time and if I put her down she would cry until I picked her up again. She also wasn't sleeping well at night. She is finally back to her normal happy self, but only one of the teeth has come through so we might be going through this again soon.

Then the kids went back to school last Monday and a couple of days later Blondie started complaining of a sore throat and was more whiny than usual. On Wednesday night she kept waking up and at one point I felt her forehead and realized that she had a slight fever as well. So I gave her some Tylenol and told her that she would not be going to school the next day (which brought tears to her eyes because she likes school). The next day she was fine as long as she was on some Tylenol but as soon as it wore off the fever came back and she started getting whiny again. I ended up keeping her home from school on Friday as well. At the end of the school day I took her to school so we could talk with her teacher to see if she needed to work on anything that she missed. Her teacher told us that there were 4 kids out from Blondie's class with strep throat so I'm hoping it doesn't develop into that. I'm thinking that the fever may have been a symptom of some molars coming in because the lower gums in the back of her mouth felt slightly swollen. We will see...

Also on Wednesday while we were at M&M's soccer practice I was sitting down on the grass with Baby K when I looked over at Luke and noticed a big bald spot on the side of his head, towards the top. I looked a little closer and noticed that the skin where the bald spot was was very scaly looking. Luke has very thick, straight hair and he combs it himself everyday and washes it himself when he showers so I usually don't look too closely at his head (except when I give him a haircut and I know the bald spot wasn't there the last time I cut his hair). I showed it to my husband that evening and did some looking online and thought that it might be tinea capitis, or ringworm of the scalp.

So the next morning I called the doctor's office and took Luke in that morning to get looked at. They decided that it was probably ringworm and so now he is on an anti-fungal medication and has to wash his hair a couple times a week with dandruff shampoo. The medicine can take up to 6 weeks to kill all the fungus but they want to follow up with him every 2 weeks to make sure he isn't having any adverse reactions to the medication. Ringworm of the scalp is caused by a fungus that is actually quite common, especially in boys between the ages of 3 and 10. It causes the hair to fall out usually in circular patches which can be infected and look quite gross. Luckily Luke's skin doesn't appear to be infected and his hair is long and thick enough to cover up the bald spot. It appears that the medication is working because the spot already looks smaller to me and it looks like the hair is already growing back.

Here is a good website on common hair loss causes in kids: http://www.kidsgrowth.com/resources/articledetail.cfm?id=236 Ringworm can be spread through the sharing of combs, brushes, hats, etc., but since Luke is on medication now he isn't supposed to be contagious anymore. Hopefully no one else in the family will catch it.